


Insidious

by LostNTheShadows



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Romance, Suspense, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-09-06 09:41:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 39
Words: 97,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8745250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostNTheShadows/pseuds/LostNTheShadows
Summary: Faction before blood. Conformity is life. And Madeline is a dead man walking.
From the second she tested Divergent, Madeline’s been plotting. Get as deep inside the belly of the beast as possible and blow it all to hell. Her life depends on it. For eight years she’s been training to become Jeanine Matthews’ perfect solider. An Erudite brain with skills not even the Dauntless could match, and a flaw so fatal Jeanine herself would kill her if she found out.
Madeline’s long-awaited assignment comes and Jeanine places her in Dauntless to ensure her plan to overthrow Abnegation is a success. Only it doesn’t matter what training Madeline’s had; Dauntless aren’t so accepting. Not even her former friend, Eric, whom she hasn’t seen since their own Choosing Ceremony eight years before.
Jeanine broke her once. Eric may just break her again. If Madeline can’t hold herself together, her secret gets out and all the training in the world won’t save her. Only Dauntless has a darkness she didn’t expect, and the closer she gets to Eric, the darker her world becomes. Will Madeline stay in the shadows? Or claw her way back to the light?





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few things to note: I'm aging the characters up to around 24. The only characters that are staying the same age are Tris and her friends (except Four), but they don't play much of a role in my story. This aging just works better for what I want to do in the story. As far as timeline you're looking at Divergent-ish, a combo between the book and the movie. I'm going to be taking creative liberties with the timeline, the story, and the characters, although all characters will remain as IC as I can get them. I'm not going to screw with them in that respect. I've read the first two books and seen the first two movies, but nothing after that. You can thank Jai Courtney for this fic. His Eric is firmly in my head.
> 
> All known characters, plots, scenes, and settings known to the Divergent series are property of Veronica Roth. Any original characters, settings, plots, or scenes are mine. No infringement is intended.

I look nothing like Dauntless. That’s one thing I won’t change until Jeanine hands me over to them. So I sit here in Erudite blue. Blue pencil skirt formed snuggly to my body. White collared shirt tucked in tightly. I’m a slipstream of professionalism that can feed someone their own entrails.

Since the day I chose to stay in Erudite I’ve been training. Jeanine’s orders. Jeanine’s own personal soldier. She has her people in Dauntless, but she wanted someone closer, more loyal to Erudite. Someone pledged. That someone was me. For eight years I trained with Erudite transfers from Dauntless. I watched archival footage buried deep in the vaults under the Erudite campus, training videos from the Before. Old military tactics, spy techniques, evasive maneuvers. I’ve had combat training and survival training, psychological testing that would break even the strongest Dauntless sycophant. Jeanine made sure I was molded to her liking before she dropped me into the wolf pack.

Even before my training started, before the Choosing Ceremony, I knew how to maneuver myself into the best possible positions. How to protect myself in all the best ways. My parents did good there, being so close to Jeanine. But not good enough to fake the test. Not then.

All the Erudite knowledge in the world couldn’t hide what I was from my proctor when I was sixteen. Luckily I knew about him fudging his brother’s Erudite tests to keep him from going Factionless. My sister told me once, a few years before, about this boy, hardly older than me, helping his below-standard sibling cheat. So we traded favors. I would keep my mouth shut about his brother and he would keep his mouth shut about my test.

About me being Divergent.

I used the needle from the serum gun to give him a little reminder to keep his mouth shut. Just a little one. Just enough to leave a faint scar. I’m far too protective of my own life to leave things like that to chance. My training over the years has kept him even quieter.

Of course I knew what a Divergent was. Jeanine’s hell-bent on eradicating them. Me. If she knew. A threat to the system, she said. Lucky for me, all she knew was that I tested Erudite. Solid, strong, dependable Erudite. And I dove head first into it.

She already favored me because of my parents, and it didn’t take long for me to prove my allegiance to her. And to prove just how capable I was. She’s a planner, that one. And her planning for me started early.

I sit here in front of her desk, staring at her as she talks. I barely hear what she says, something about success of the project, initiation of the plan. I’ve heard the same damn thing for eight years. The chances of her saying anything different now are slim. 

Still I smile whenever her lip twitches up, when her eyes sparkle. She likes to think she’s impossible to read. She also likes to underestimate everyone around her, no matter the evidence. She knows my capabilities, yet every time she withholds some information her breath hitches. It’s such an insignificant beat not even she notices. But I do.

The day has finally come when I’m to be handed off to Dauntless. A consultant, she calls it. A mole among moles, is more like it. All of Dauntless leadership is in her pocket, but it’s all at a distance. I’m meant to bring it all together. Be an extension of her. The gun in her own hand. And I will make her turn it on herself.

We’re just waiting for members of the leadership team to arrive, and I have a nervous feeling one of them will be Eric. I haven’t seen him since our Choosing Ceremony. His parents, like mine, were close with Jeanine. It was one big inner circle, and we grew up together. 

We weren’t close, not really. We were more friends of friends. We’d see each other on the opposite sides of our own circles, smile, wave. We talked a few times, but nothing meaningful. There was never that much time. Our parents had us busy. We were all part of the plan.

When Eric chose Dauntless, that was the last I saw of him. And now, as I sit here waiting, my heart flutters and my palms grow clammy. I noticed Eric when we were younger, sure. It was hard not to. But I wasn’t one of his many admirers, throwing him glances and giggling when he smiled his straight-toothed smile. 

But I noticed. I felt the flutters in my stomach, the heat in my cheeks. I caught him staring a little too long a few times. Staring at me over the head of a girl he happened to be speaking to. But it never went anywhere.

The phone buzzes and I’m jerked out of my reverie by Jeanine’s secretary’s voice.

“Ms. Matthews, they’re here.”

“Good, let them in,” Jeanine responds as she hits a button on the phone. “Do I need to be worried that the Dauntless will prey on any weaknesses in you, Madeline?”

I give a breathy laugh as I stand up with her, smoothing out my skirt in the process. “They think they will, but they won’t have a chance.”

Truly, they won’t. For eight years I slept with one eye open, not knowing who she’d send after me. I’d been ambushed in the Ruins more times than I can count, from every vantage point possible. Jeanine’s a ruthless bitch, but she’s thorough. She has a lot riding on my success and she made sure I wouldn’t fail.

I won’t fail.

“Good.” The door opening echoes in the vast space of her office but I don’t turn around. Not yet. My face is a mask of indifference but I’m nearly choking on my heart. “Leadership knows, but I advised them to not let that information trickle down to the ranks.”

“Naturally everyone knows by now.”

She smirks. Even with that devious smile she’s a beautiful woman, if a little worn around the edges. Masterminding can take that kind of toll. “Naturally.”

“Is this her?” one of the team says.

Max. I’ve seen him around plenty of times and I know his voice well, even if he doesn’t know me as good. I’ve learned to play the phantom better than the dead.

“In the name of inter-faction alliance, I present you with Madeline Bordonaro, your new Erudite consultant,” she says. 

Her eyes twitch when she says it, the insinuation of sarcasm ghosting her words in the face of familiarity, of Max and myself. But she reins herself in, holds back on the joke because not everyone is fully in on it.

I turn around, careful on my heels. My make-up is perfect, subtle but present. My hair is neatly styled. I am immaculate. Ever the Erudite on the outside. On the inside I’m raging to destroy the carefully planned world Jeanine’s created.

I nod to Max and he nods back. He doesn’t know me well, but he’s seen me. We’ve met before over the years. The man behind him is unfamiliar to me, and probably the reason Jeanine controlled her tone when they came in. The bigger her plan, the smaller her inner circle, and this man was not part of that elite bunch.

The man behind that one, though, is a specter from my youth. He was never gawky when we were younger, but he’s filled out incredibly nicely. His black uniform sits snugly on his frame, broad shoulders pulling at the fabric. They all wear the same thing on Dauntless business, but his appears crafted to his body. 

He’s added modifications over the years, like all Dauntless do. Another place where I’ll stand out. No longer with smooth skin, black tattoos trace up his neck and hide down the collar of his shirt. Plugs in each ear and a bar in his eyebrow. His hair is slicked back, longer on top and shaved shorter on the sides, chiseling out his features even more.

In all these years my name hasn’t changed. As part of leadership he knew it was me that was coming. As part of the inner circle he even knows some of the training I’ve done. I don’t know whether he gave any thought to me or not, but as his eyes widen I see I’m not what he was expecting. 

I’m no longer nondescript. I don’t blend into the background unless I want to. Plain is not a word people have used to describe me in a long time. At this moment he’s wearing his emotions on his face, reconciling the woman before him with the girl he left behind in Erudite.

It only lasts a second before his face shutters and he clasps his hands behind his back.

Eric.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy moley! I had no idea I'd get this kind of response so soon. Or at all! That makes me so happy! I'm glad I can hook you all in. Let's see how good I can get you. :) Gear up for teases and thrills and some sexy times. I couldn't not with Jai Courtney's Eric in my head. Kind of impossible.

“Eric, you must remember Madeline. I know it’s been a while, but I don’t think she’s changed too much, do you?” Jeanine’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and I know what she says hides a warning.

She saw Eric’s look. It could have meant nothing. We haven’t actually seen each other in years. I’ve learned to hide my emotions as if I’m nothing more than a block of cement. Eric, on the other hand, let something through. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough. And Jeanine’s grabbed it. _This is professional_ , she says. _Move on._

Only his eyes move between Jeanine and I before they hold on me. He doesn’t smile, but he says, “I do. Madeline.”

He inclines his head just a fraction, and he’s looking at me, but not my eyes. No, he’s looking at my forehead. A not-so-sneaky trick to avoid a person’s direct stare. If someone is even the least bit perceptive they’d notice something like that. And I do. The last Eric I knew was sixteen. He was ambitious then. Cocky, even. And he’s made it to leadership, so he’s done something right. But I don’t know twenty-four-year-old Eric. I don’t know the man, and I can’t even begin to guess what’s going on in his head.

I nod back and look back over to Jeanine. “Is there anything else?”

With a subtle shake of her head she says, “No. Good luck, Madeline. I have every faith in you.”

“Ma’am,” I say before turning my back on her. 

She’ll contact me when she wants information. Considering how co-mingled Dauntless and Erudite have become I’m sure I’ll be seeing her again fairly soon. I just don’t know when. Nothing’s scheduled, but I’d better be ready to give her progress reports when she so requires them. The urge to stab her in the hand with a pen is high in me right now.

Eric leads us out, followed by the unnamed guy I don’t know, and Max brings up the rear. We walk through the harshly lit hallways of Erudite’s main building and wait at the elevator. As Dauntless I’m sure they’re twitching to use the stairs, and they’re welcome to. But I don’t say anything. No one’s said anything since we left Jeanine’s office. The silence is thick and swirls around us like a fog. 

When the doors open we file in and I end up nestled in the middle, surrounded by Dauntless leaders. Dauntless guards. My escorts. Why three? I keep back a smile as I think about it taking three of them to subdue one of me should I decide to go off the rails. But that wouldn’t be necessary. I’m Jeanine’s special little soldier. Completely devoted to her.

Maybe they’re here to protect me from the other Dauntless. Those that won’t approve of the Erudite intrusion. Those who will think I didn’t earn my place in their faction and have no business being there.

That smile tries to creep out again, but it doesn’t even twitch my lip.

My fingers are threaded in front of me, resting against my stomach. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Eric staring straight ahead. Where Max on my left has kept a respectable distance as he leans against the wall, Eric is straight as an arrow, his arm brushing the sleeve of my shirt. I listen to the fabrics rustling against each other and only the ding of the elevator brings me out of my daze.

Boot heels, stiletto heels clack against the tile floor as we exit the building. Our little group draws some stares but no ones’ eyes linger long. We’re out the door before they even have a chance to process what they’re seeing. 

A car is waiting out front and Max heads for the driver’s side, opening the back door for me before getting into the front seat. I slide in and see Eric getting in on the other side, the unnamed man up front next to Max. I let out a slow sigh and rest my hands on my lap, my feet planted evenly on the floor.

I itch to tap my fingers, fidget. Do something. But my training’s kicked in and I give nothing away. Even if I did I could just chalk it up to nerves about the transfer. Sure, those are there. I’m not dead. I do still feel fear and nervousness and I get anxiety. I’m just an expert at hiding those feelings.

No, I’m not worried about Dauntless. I can just smell the lingering scent of Eric’s soap and it takes all the mental lassoing I can muster to keep the images in my head from going _there_. It wouldn’t behoove me to get that distracted on day one. Eight years of training for naught. Jeanine would kill me herself.

I feel eyes boring into the side of my head and my inner sixteen-year-old, the one who’s heart beat just a little faster when Eric looked at her, wants to blush. Maybe even bat her eyes a little. Instead I keep my back stiff and look to find him staring at me.

He’s finally looking me in the eyes.

After an awkward beat he blinks and looks back forward. His voice is a rumble in his chest, vibrations I feel through the seat and I clench my legs together a little tighter.

“They’re not going to trust you, you know.”

I don’t look ahead. I stay facing him, watching his lips move, the muscles in his jaw work. When I’m sure he’s not going to say anything else I ask, “Do you?”

He turns his head back to me, staring me straight in the eye. I keep my breathing steady, my hands clasped lightly and not otherwise moving in my lap. I wait, and watch. He’s trained well, unless caught completely off guard, like in Jeanine’s office. Right now I read nothing on him.

“No.”

I watch his lips form the word, just one syllable, and they wrap around it so authoritatively even I don’t think to question it. He faces back forward and says nothing else.

Game on. If this is how he’ll act he’ll make this whole assignment incredibly easy for me. It won’t stop him from being so incredibly nice to look at, but at least that’s where it’ll end. I’ll be able to stay focused, keep on my mission for Jeanine, and gather all the intelligence I need to bring it all crashing down.

Easy peasy.

I look out my own window and watch the ruins rush by. I never understood why our society insisted on squatting in man’s waste, a daily reminder of their failure and our success. Why not dismantle it all? Use it for scrap?

I also never understood why we booted so many people out of the factions. It seemed like such an abject waste of resources, throwing perfectly good members of society away because they don’t fit a mold. It just plants the seeds for discourse and I’m watering the saplings on that growing tree.

This is why I’m Divergent. Erudite taught me to think. I took it too far.

The car comes to a stop and doors open in front of a warehouse building ten stories high. I’ve seen Dauntless headquarters during many of my training sessions, but I’ve never been in.

I let myself out and watch as the three men walk into their home, now my home for the foreseeable future. It’s an eroded building, something the weather’s beaten down to tatters. But this is how the Dauntless like it. It fits their image. The non-conformists of our conformist society.

My eyes travel up and sun glints off the glass on the roof and I wince in the flare. I walk around the car and follow the men into the building. Max holds the door open for me and before I’m even at the threshold I’m assaulted by sound.

The wolf den.


	3. 3

It’s a cacophony of sound and I nearly wince at the noise. Nearly. Instead I just blink as I follow Eric and the other Dauntless member while Max brings up the rear.

We walk through a small foyer that looks largely unused, probably because the adrenaline junkies in this faction prefer to rappel out their windows to just using a door. Working smarter, not harder isn’t always everyone’s motto.

“This is the Pit,” Max says as he walks up next to me, motioning to the giant open space in front of me. “It’s our axis. Everything comes back to this place.”

Noise echoes in the giant open space and I see a couple of Dauntless sparring. From where I stand I can’t tell whether they’re play fighting or actual fighting.

“Is that normal?” I ask, pointing to the fighters.

Max nods. “Very. Everyone’s always jockeying for position, especially the lower ranks. Get a hand up in a fight and it could get you noticed.

Peacocks. All of them. Then again, it’s really no different from the brain games people in Erudite would play as a means of one-upping each other. We just didn’t use our fists and the victor still came out dripping in smugness. I hide my sneer and move on with my little entourage.

We passed by mess where few people linger at the moment. It’s between meal times anyway, so that’s to be expected. We walk over a horribly unsafe little footbridge, the only thing keeping up from dropping into a raging river beneath us. Of course it’s made all the more perilous by my very un-Dauntless stilettos. I hardly waver walking over that death trap, but now my muscles are screaming from how tense they just were. Not to mention my heart’s thundering in my chest.

Luckily the corridor we turn down, while cavernous, is very Erudite in its construction. All smooth tile and finely honed walls that speak more to a command center than the prison compound I just walked through. Minutes in and I’m already second-guessing every choice I’ve made in life for the last eight years. This is starting off well.

We stop in front of a door and Max punches a code into the panel. With a hiss the door slides open and the four of us enter what is actually a command room. Screens line three of the four walls and people swivel in chairs as we walk in. More rest against the tables against the walls. All glare at me as if I’m an invader.

For a second panic wells up in me. What if they know? What if they have some way of detecting Divergents Jeanine didn’t tell me outside of the sims? What if they can smell it on me? Then my rational brain kicks in and stomps all those crazy thoughts down. I’ll freak out about all of that later. Or maybe not depending on what I find out.

“So this is the narc, huh?” I turn to see a woman leaning against the table, her glare capable of shooting lasers at me. She had rings through both nostrils and bright pink streaks running through jet black hair pulled up in a pony tail. It looks like she attacked her clothes with a pair of scissors before putting them on and I have the sudden urge to hook into one of those nose rings and yank. As soldiers they should know better than to have such obvious targets on their person. “Doesn’t look like much.”

Her nose would bleed so much if I were to just rip out one of those rings. Considering my first impression is already a bad one I keep my hands clamped behind me as the door shuts and I try not to smirk at the images dancing in my head.

“You’ll have a hard time soldiering in those shoes,” a man with a shaved head says. This elicits laughter from the group. Or most of the group. Max and Eric don’t even smile. The bald man, a snake tattoo circling his head, continues laughing as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

“And you’ll have a hard time escaping when I stomp one into your thigh,” I retort, a small smile on my face.

The man scoffs. “As if you’d be able to catch me.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Is that what you’re taught? To run away? Silly me, here I am thinking soldiers are supposed to diffuse situations, not run crying from them.”

I’ve caught him and he knows it. And now the entire room knows it as his bald head glows red. His nostrils flare and it takes everything in me not to break out laughing.

“Oh what do you know?” Another man, this one sitting next to the pink zebra from before, more piercings in his face than I can count from here. Where’s an industrial magnet when you need one? “Not like you’ve ever seen combat.”

At this I don’t hide my own scoff. “I’ve seen just as much combat as you have. Which is to say none. That fence has never been engaged. We’ve never had to deploy our forces. So I have the same practical experience you have. Along with the same training. In fact, I probably have more.”

My ego’s getting away from me. I shouldn’t goad them. I’m on their turf, invading their space, but they’re not even giving me a chance. They’re trying to tear me down immediately. I won’t allow that to happen. I can’t. If I do they’ll eat me alive and everything I’ve worked for will be for nothing.

A throaty chuckle makes its way to my ears and I turn to see a petite woman sidle up to me, eyeballing me as if I’m a piece of meat she’s about to carve up. Her hair’s cut short, spiked up in places and flat to her head in the front, black as midnight. No piercings on her, but a thick black tattoo swirls up out of her collar and wraps around her neck. What is with these people and their tattoos?

“Not a chance.” She holds my gaze right off the bat, unafraid to confront me head on. I can almost respect that. “We live and breathe this life. No way can you learn it by just reading books. You Erudite thing you’re so smart.” She sneers then, as if my faction is a putrid thing in her mouth. “You think you’re better than everyone else. You are nothing here and you will stay nothing.”

I don’t blame her. I can’t blame her. I’m an intruder. I didn’t go through Dauntless initiation. Not those measly handful of weeks initiates go through. I just had eight years of hell for my initiation. But saying that won’t do me any good. No. I’m going to need to prove myself with these people. My new faction? I can’t call it that. Not yet. It doesn’t . . . feel right.

“Jeanine assured us that Madeline was trained to our standards,” Max says as he steps up to the woman, trying to shoulder his way between the two of us.

The woman only sneers and turns her head toward him. “Queen Bee says it so it must be true.”

“Watch your mouth.” Eric’s voice rumbles through the room and I look to him but he, too, is looking at the woman, his glare something that could cut. “You didn’t get here by doubting, Kai. Now would not be the time to start.”

Her sneer turns into a leer and she slowly turns back to me. She purses her lips, this Kai, and her gaze holds mind. “No, I don’t doubt Jeanine. What Prim and Proper here needs to get is that school’s over. She’s in the field now. She’s going to have to up her game.”

It’s barely a noise but I still hear it, the subtle squeak of a chair against the tile floor. Someone moved. Fabric rustles together, the noise coming from behind me. Whoever is doing the sneaking is doing a piss poor job of it.

I stop the hand from coming at me before it gets anywhere near close. I chance a quick glance down and see the blade in the calloused hand, not even long enough to reach my arm from where I’ve stopped it. I look up to see a snarling man with an horrendous bleach job trying to push his way forward and his face turning red from the strain.

With little effort on my part I crimp his wrist back and the knife clatters to the table. He lets out a rather un-manly grunt and I drop his arm and immediately pick up the blade. The man with the shaved head goes to move and I flick the blade at him, anchoring his sleeve to the chair he’s sitting in.

My last move is just a small nod on my part but the crunch the woman’s nose makes nearly makes me smile when I head butt her. She grunts and lets loose a tirade of swears as she backs away, clutching her face in her hand as blood drips through her fingers.

“Is my game turned up enough for you?” I ask her. “It can go louder.”

“Enough,” Max says as he steps firmly in front of me, blocking off the rest of the room, easing back the pack.

I chance a glance at Eric and I catch him smirking, his eyes lingering on me before shifting away toward the crowd.

“Madeline is here to help us, not hinder us. She’s on our side.” I nod at this while I think, _I’m only on my side_. “You all’ve had weeks of initiation followed by years of on-the-job experience. Madeline’s had eight years of solid tactical training. She’s no more or less competent than any of you.”

I’d bed to differ. I think I’m far for competent than these showboats, but I don’t say that. Of course, I don’t think they’re incompetent, but in a fair fight I’m confident I’d nail most of these asses to a wall and mount them like trophies. Same odds in an unfair fight. “Tactical training” doesn’t even begin to describe what I’ve been through.

“So what? We just take Jeanine’s word for it? We don’t get to put her through the ringer ourselves?” the woman named Kai asks from behind her bloodied hand.

“Both,” Eric chimes in and I look to him, but he’s not looking at me. “Jeanine wouldn’t stick her in the most ruthless faction without thinking she’d survive it. Doesn’t mean she won’t have to prove herself.”

He turns to look at me then and he gives me a knowing stare, his eyebrow twitching just slightly. I take the bait.

“What’ll I have to do?” I ask, a dull throb forming in my head. I don’t think I hit Kai quite right. Ugh.

His lip twitches and a half smile pulls up his mouth. “We’ll have you work with this new batch of initiates. Hands-on. See how you train. We’ll want to run you through the serum, get a look in that head of yours.”

My lips twitch up into my own smile, but inside I’m flooded with ice. I’ve been in the sims plenty of times, but they’re more draining than hours of physical training. Faking a sim is no easy feat and if there’s a more dangerous place for my Divergent status to get found than Erudite, it’s Dauntless. I’ve heard . . . things over the years. A lot of no-so-random people end up dead, all of them with questionable test results.

“Being a little light on me, don’t you think?” My tone is playful, almost mocking, and Eric’s smile grows, but his is less playful. Menace threads across his lips and I wonder how much of that is real, and how much is for show.

He shrugs. “We’ll see. You might not think it’s so light when we’re done with you.”

“Indeed,” I say and turn back to the group, leaving him looking at me. “I think the first step,” I say, stepping away from Max, “is getting me some Dauntless clothes. I can’t be walking around looking all Erudite, can I?”

The bald man yanked the knife out of his sleeve and fiddles with the blade as he stares at me. “And your name. Initiates get to change it if they want to. Since we’re pretending you’re one of us, might as well give you that courtesy.”

“I don’t think Maddie’s too Dauntless of a name. People might not take you too seriously,” Kai adds with a smirk that I badly want to slap from her face.

I bristle at the name. “I don’t go by Maddie.”

“What do you go by then?” Eric’s voice is thunder in my chest and I turn to look at him. He raises his eyebrows, silently urging me on. He didn’t change his name, but even in Erudite they don’t call me Madeline anymore.

“Bo,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I go by Bo.”

This sly little frown crawls across his face. “Bo? From Bordonaro?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug. “Something like that.”

“Bo,” Max says, as he turns to me. I nod to him in acknowledgment. “The night’s yours. We’ll start in the morning. Eric will show you to your room. Jeanine sent things ahead for you and we’ve provided additional supplies for your transition. Be back here at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow.”

I nod again and look around the room, at the surly faces watching me, two of which are outwardly hostile. Maybe next time they’ll think before they act. I’ll need to instill in these people that underestimation can get them killed. I also need to stop thinking of them as ‘these people.’ They’re my people now. I shiver at the thought. Breaking away from Erudite isn’t going to be easy, and I need to ingratiate myself with Dauntless as much as possible. Meaning I need to dive head first into this mission.

Eric clears his throat and I follow him out of the room, leaving the pissed off Dauntless stuck firmly in Jeanine’s pocket.


	4. 4

His silence is driving me up a wall. It’s not like we were best friends before the Choosing Ceremony, but we knew each other, we were friendly. It would have been nice to have the comfort of at least one familiar face in his rather hostile faction. Instead I get nothing but Eric’s back as he walks ahead of me, our shoes clicking and clacking against stone and tile as we walk through corridors, up stairs and down hallways.

I say nothing. He says nothing. It’s a whole lot of nothing going on and it makes me want to scream. But I don’t. I’m cool and composed and I’ll probably end up with an incredible headache later thanks to all the emotions and stress and worries I’m holding in right now. Totally composed on the outside, a bit of a mess on the inside. At least when I have time, like right now, to think and stew and roll things over in my head. Always thinking. Too much thinking. It can get me killed.

My thighs scream as we climb story after story and we finally come out to what has to be the top floor of the Dauntless building. No matter how fit you are, stairs always suck, and it takes everything in me not to rub the burn out of my legs.

The hallway we walk into is dark, the dingy lightbulbs overhead barely casting enough light to see by. We pass door after door, numbers on the jambs moving up, until he stops in front of one: number thirty-six. He pulls a key out of his pocket and clanks it around in the lock before I hear a click and the door swings open.

Light assaults me as I blink back the brightness after being immersed in the dank hallway. I step into the room and for a moment I’m speechless. I’m in an atrium facing out to the corner of the city, a portion of the fence in the distance. Above me is blue sky and I momentarily forget where I am. For everything that is cavernous and shadowed about Dauntless, this is even better than my sterile living quarters back at Erudite. This almost feels cozy.

“It’s west-facing.” I turn around, almost forgetting Eric is even there. “You won’t get the sun in your face too early in the morning.” He holds out the key, waiting for me to take it. “Your things from Erudite are on the bed. Provisions from Dauntless are on the shelves.”

I reach out and take the key, brushing my fingers over his hands, but he quickly jerks his hand back. It’s nothing. I was only taking the key and I give away nothing.

“Think you can find mess? We passed it going to command.” I nod and stare into a face that also gives nothing away. At least in that one thing we’re alike. “I’m in forty-eight if you need anything.”

Without another word he turns to leave. He’s almost to the door before I find my nerve to call his name.

“Eric.”

His pause is telling, the tensing of his shoulders, his slow turn back around. He lifts his eyebrows up and tilts his head just slightly.

“Is this it?” I ask.

A look passes over this face. “Is what it?”

I clench my jaw. “This. Us. I know it’s been a while and it’s not like we were close before but . . . I didn’t think we were such strangers.”

A late night gym session will help me punch away all the weakness I’m showing right now. It nearly makes me sick. Shit, not even a day in Dauntless and already I’m lonely. I stuck out in Erudite, but at least people didn’t shun me. They weren’t derisive toward me.

“Faction before blood, Madel—Bo. Prove yourself in our tests and then we’ll talk.”

It was only a suggestion of a smile, a faint flicker of his lip curling up, his eyes lighting up for just a second, and then it’s gone. He turns and walks out the door.

Faction before blood. Of course. I didn’t have a total read on Eric yet, and I couldn’t tell whether he was buying into all of this or whether it was just bravado. I guess I’ll find out.

He closes my door behind him and I turn back to the room, taking it all in. It’s big, bigger than what I had in Erudite. And it’s all open. The bed is on the far side of the room, what looks like a queen, maybe. Bookshelves kiddie corner the bed, turning the area into a sleeping nook, buffering it from the greater room. On the other side of the shelves is the bathroom, thankfully with its own door. Extra cushioned chairs are scattered around the room. I have a desk and matching chair, completely utilitarian, but thoroughly used. Where Erudite was sterile and pristine Dauntless is well worn and chaotic.

My head only bucks against this chaos for a second. Of course it was hard to break away from my regimented life, but I find this chance welcoming. On my bed is a bag filled with my personal effects from my room, trinkets from my parents. Nothing too personal. No. That stuff was hidden well beyond Erudite’s reach. Beyond anyone’s reach.

A few books are already scattered across the shelves and I find my new Dauntless clothes on the lower shelves, little more than standard issue uniforms. They must have stores or something down below. I’ve seen too many people wearing so much more than just regulation gear. They had to get it from somewhere. I’ll have to go hunting.

It feels good to unzip the Erudite skirt that binds me in so tightly. Kick off the shoes that prop me up. The stiff collar of the shirt snaps as I flick it away. For the first time in years I feel free. It’s fleeting, this one little moment, but the moment is mine and in it I can finally breathe.

The Dauntless pants are form-fitting but maneuverable. The black tank top and jacket are as comfortable as expected. The boots are far more comfortable than I expected. They must be specially made, contoured to a person’s feet. And they’re light, yet surprisingly durable. I’m impressed.

Before wandering down to find the mess I walk out onto the balcony and stand in the setting sun, letting it warm me in the cooling fall air. It’s crisp, but not cold. We still have a little while yet before the air turns bitter. For now I stand looking out over my little corner of the city and think of all my secrets hidden in little crevices only to be found by me. Jeanine thinks her biggest threat are the Divergents. She has no idea what’s brewing right under her feet.

I smile to myself, turn around, and walk out of my new home.

**#**

Mess isn’t hard to find. I head down and then just follow the noise. Follow the tide of people making their way to dinner. In my all-black outfit and standing five inches shorter than when I walked into Dauntless headquarters, I blend in far better with the crowd. I’ve thrown my hair up into a messy knot. For a moment I’m worried I should have removed my make-up but when I look around I see what I’m wearing is downright non-existent compared to what I find on some of the women in the crowd.

I don’t try to find anyone. I doubt anyone from command would want me anywhere near them. Instead I grab a cup and a plate and find my way to an empty space at a table. I pick food out of the communal plates in the center of the table, but I otherwise keep my head down. Doesn’t stop the eyes from seeing me. I can feel them burning into my back as I sit there. Command can keep secrets, but Kai’s damaged face and that other guy’s injured wrist would speak to something else. It looks like that something has gotten around. My coming was a well-known secret. My damage is a flashing billboard in the halls.

“I hope you’re not trying to keep a low profile,” a low voice says as the table shakes.

I look up and see a man sitting in front of me, features chiseled to a fine perfection. Where Eric is all hard edges and narrowed eyes hardly softened by his lighter hair, this man is dark. Nearly black hair and thick eyebrows cast shadows on his face but his features are rounded, softened, but nowhere near gentle. He doesn’t smile and there’s barely any inflection in his tone.

“I hope you’re not trying to talk to the outcast. It may be contagious,” I say, and keep the smile from my face.

“You confuse me with someone who cares what these guys think,” he replies.

I shift my eyes around the room. Most everyone left is involved in their own conversations, but a few cast darting glances toward me. I make sure to hold each glare, drill them down to discomfort, and force their look away.

“You do to some degree. Otherwise you’d be Factionless.” 

I shove another piece of food in my mouth and chew quietly. The din in the room is getting lower as people finish their food and file out. What Dauntless does for fun, I have no idea. Bungee jumping, maybe. Or hanging off that bridge I first walked over, seeing who can hold on the longest. All I want right now is a drink.

As if reading my mind he motions toward the doors behind me and says, “The Gauntlet has Amity alcohol. Looks like you could use it.”

I frown at him. “What’s The Gauntlet?”

“Down off the Pit. It’s a bar. They’re open pretty late.”

I nod and look down at my plate. Nothing more than a few crumbs are left. I throw my fork on the plate and brush off my hands.

“Thanks. What’s your name?” I ask.

“Four,” he says and I nearly laugh.

“Four? As in the digit?”

“The very same,” he says with a snide smirk. As if he’s gotten the same reaction every time he’s introduced himself.

“Dare I ask?”

“No,” is his curt reply.

“Got it. Catch you later, Four. Thanks for the tip,” I say as I grab my plate and head out the door.

He tips his cup to me in a silent salute and tucks back into his food without saying another word. Well, that’s one person who doesn’t look at me like I’m something stuck to the bottom of their shoe. Better than the no friendly faces I had an hour ago. Granted, Four wasn’t exactly friendly. He just wasn’t ignoring me. No sense in jumping the gun just yet.

Right now, I think I’m going to hit up The Gauntlet. Pretty sad that I’ll be drinking alone, but at the way my day’s gone, and how my initiation into this faction is going to go, I’m going to need all the alcohol I can get.


	5. 5

Amity has the best liquor. You wouldn’t think so with how, well, amiable they are. Free loving and happy all the time. If I had free-flowing booze I think I’d be a lot happier too. Considering they’re our farmers, they’re also our main suppliers of alcoholic ingredients. Potatoes for vodka (they make a wonderful juice that creates a great mixer), corn for grain alcohol (moonshine or White Lightning as we used to call it when we were younger, that stuff could knock out an ox, it’s so strong), and grape varietals for wine. Sure, food needs to be economically grown and sourced, but we also need to unwind a little. Not even Jeanine is above a good glass of Bordeaux.

Bass pounds through my chest as I walk up to The Gauntlet. The bar is literally a hole in the wall, stools and tables and chairs scattered in the open space in front of it. Dauntless doesn’t need a club. They make a club wherever they need one. Right now bodies writhe on a makeshift dance floor set off to the side of the space where the lights are dimmed. Flashes of skin show through swaths of black as the Dauntless move to the beat thrumming through the speakers. I can barely hear myself think, but I distinctly hear, _it’s been too long_ , from somewhere deep inside my head.

And it really has. Not just having a drink, but letting everything go. I’m not about to join the crowd, but I find a sliver of space at the bar and shoulder my way through.

Lit up behind the bar are a bunch of bottles with varying levels of liquid in them. I can’t tell the vodka from the grain and it looks like they still have a good selection of whites and reds back there. Now is when wine starts becoming scarce, when he seasons start to turn.

The bartender spots me and heads over when he’s finished with his current customer. “What’ll it be?” he yells over the thumping bass.

“A shiner,” I yell back. “What do you have for chasers?”

He looks down behind the bar, rooting around among bottles that clink together. “Just some grape juice.”

“It’ll do.” I nod and he mixes up my drink.

He hands it off to me and starts in with another customer before it’s even left his hands. I bring the glass to my lips and the grain burns my nostrils. I take a sip and it takes everything in me from spitting it right back out. We used to sneak this stuff when we were younger, back before the Choosing Ceremony. I remember the faces I made but I don’t remember it being this awful. It tastes like the fumes out of the back of a car smells. 

I take another, bigger sip.

I drop my head down to my chest and curl into myself, desperately trying to hide my twisted alcohol face as I choke the drink down. If by unwind I meant spit fire, I’m doing a damn good job of getting there.

Liquid sloshes out of my glass, splashing onto the bar, as someone sidles up next to me, elbowing their way in in a way that hits every soft spot on my side. I turn to see who just shoved their way in and scoff. Black-eyed Kai is side-in to the bar, a drink in her hand, and a glare just for me.

I roll my eyes away from her and back to my drink. It’s more interesting as I watch it swirl in my glass.

“You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?” she half-yells over the pounding bass line.

Her hand fiddles with her glass, all the while her eyes stay zeroed in on my face. I shift under her glare and look back at her.

“Not really.” I shrug. “Maybe luke warm shit, but definitely not hot. I’ve been out of the asshole long enough to cool a little.”

“It’s going to take a lot more than a self-deprecating joke to make it around here,” she says.

I almost applaud her for using big words, but I hold myself back. Patronizing the woman whose face I smashed in probably won’t help my cause. Instead I look back to my glass and say, “I know.”

God, do I know. I’m surprised I haven’t been jumped yet. Maybe that’s why Kai’s here. Get me to lower my guard and before I know it I’ll have five guys on me smashing me into the ground. Or maybe she’s alone, taunting me all by herself.

“It took sack, what you did at command.”

Or she’s looking to have a conversation? Now things might be getting a little weird. After so long of looking over my shoulder and trusting only myself, I almost don’t know how to act. So I remain skeptical and shake my head. 

“No, just pride. It’d be dumb of me to let you guys walk all over me, wouldn’t it? You would have torn me right up if given the chance. Am I wrong?”

She laughs and looks down at her glass before taking a sip. “No, you’re not wrong. Can’t say I blame you for what you did.” She shrugs. “I would have done the same thing if it were me. I would have left more bruises, though.”

I finish off my drink and tap it on the bar, catching the bartender’s eye for a refill. “I can give you more if that’s what you’re really looking for. I didn’t mean to go so light on you.”

I catch her eye and I feel like I’m under a microscope. Her gaze drills down into me, searching me for something. I don’t know what. She turns to the bartender and hands over her glass, which he refills and hands back to her.

“You really been in training for eight years?” she asks, her head tilted to the side, her eyes narrowed, like she really doesn’t believe what she’s been told.

Black, spiky hair melds into the shadows cast by flickering lights and her eyes look like dark pools buried under her make-up. Chipped, dark nail polish sticks to her fingernails and leather cuffs round each wrist. She fits right in.

“Really. I might as well been in solitary confinement in Dauntless for what I’ve done. Take the hardest trainer here and multiply them by a million. That’s what Jeanine was. For eight years.”

Maybe I might be a little scarred from what I went through. The shit I went through. I lost count of how many times I suffered through Candor’s goddamn truth serum, how many fear sims I’ve waded through, how many bones I’ve broken, how many times I’ve passed out. How many nights I didn’t sleep because Jeanine set up kidnappings for me to escape. But I don’t tell Kai any of this. I’m not looking to show off. I’ll prove myself well enough when they test me. She doesn’t need access to my closet.

She leans in closer, her voice conspiratorial. “Did you really learn things from Before? I heard about some kind of archival footage that people called secret agents used to get. Is that true?”

I smile and polish off my second drink. Now’s my time to exit, before the questions get too deep and I get tired of dodging them. I can’t deal with that right now. Not on my first night.

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

I place the glass back on the bar and slap Kai on the shoulder. “See you at seven, Kai.”

My hands fit snugly into my jacket pockets so I stuff them in and walk away, counting the steps until I can fall into bed and put this day behind me.

**#**

Ceiling, in all its shadowed glory, stares back at me as I stare at it, wide-eyed and frustrated. My mind has been whirring for hours, running through every possible scenario they could put me through. Eight years of training. There is nothing they’ll try that I won’t have some level of knowledge about. And Eric. Why am I so hung up on Eric?

My nerves feel on fire and I feel like if I don’t burn off some of this energy immediately I’m not going to get any sleep and tomorrow, or rather later this morning, is going to be dead awful.

I pull on some workout clothes, throw my hair up into a knot, and head out. I know the training areas are somewhere in the basements of this place. I just need to head down. And around. And just when I think I’ve got myself right and proper lost I find something. An open expanse of space where my footsteps echo.

A pad of switches sits on the wall next to me, half-hidden in shadow, and I flick one. The light overhead blares to life and I squint in its shine. I turn it off and try another. Mats laid out around the floor beam up. Still not what I want. By the fourth switch and I’m losing my patience, but it finally pays off.

At the far end of this cavernous room, now lit by my beacon of light, sits a row of punching bags. Exactly what I want. I just need to wail.

Remembering where everything was laid out, and guided by the ambient light over my own little workout section, I dodge through the room and make it over to the bags anchored on posts to the floor. I won’t need long. Ten, fifteen minutes maybe. Just long enough to burn off some of this brain fuel and put me to sleep.

Unfortunately there isn’t any tape. No rolls anywhere. I have some, up in my apartment. Not going back up there. Guess I’ll be finding some ice later.

The first hit helps me find my bearings. The second starts my rhythm. The third sews it all together and everything clicks. I could be dancing, the way I flash and kick, move around the bag as if it were a person. Jabbing and kneeing and elbowing. Each impact is a release, each grunt is a painful piece of pleasure ramming into me. Stress melts away from me and after a handful of minutes I’m infinitely lighter.

Sweat gleams on my skin, drips down my face, and I press my forehead into the bag, a moment of rest from my little attack.

“Isn’t it a little late?”

I shudder and jump away from the bag, looking to see who’d just snuck up on me. I hear his steps before he finally makes it into the light and I relax while holding myself straighter. Four.

“I could say the same to you.” I grab the shirt at my feet and wipe the sweat away before pulling it back on. “Anyway, I’m done.”

He puts his hands out as if to stop me, or surrender himself. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“That is certainly not a concern of mine. I assure you.” I start to walk out, but then I stop, remembering that I have roughly zero friends here right now, and a faction full of potential enemies. I watch him flex up his eyebrows as he walks past me to the bags and pulls a roll of tape from his pocket.

“Look—“

“I get it,” he says, not looking at me as he tapes up his hands. “I’d tell you to loosen up, but that could get you killed.”

“So what won’t get me killed?” I ask. He seems to be opening up, however little, and I’m sure as hell going to capitalize on it.

“Stay alert.” He taps on a piece of tape and looks up at me. “Never let your guard down. You’re as good as an initiate to them. They’re going to treat you like one.” Great. Like I need to go through that a second time. “Trust no one.”

A cold wave washes through me and I shiver. But I can’t help but laugh. “Even you?”

Four shrugs and throws a punch at the bag. “Even me.”

“And why is that?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Trust can get you dead,” he says, without stopping his throws.

And there’s a lot of dead around Dauntless. The faction has a higher than average mortality rate. Comes with the job, but even faction members seem to die a little more than they should. But why is Four telling me this? Is this Max’s first test? Shake me down, make me paranoid. The prickle crawling up the back of my neck says it may be working, but I won’t admit that to myself.

“Is there a lot of trust going on in Dauntless?” I ask, a smile to my words. This has to be all a joke.

“Enough,” he says and stops, turning to me, his dark eyes boring into me before he turns back to the bag and starts wailing.

I turn my back on him and leave. It feels like my brain’s in a knot. I have more inside information on Dauntless leadership than Dauntless leadership does. There are very few things I don’t know. Apparently one of them is the Dauntless death toll. Jeanine never mentioned anything out of the ordinary. I’ll have to look into it.

As I leave the training arena exhaustion weighs heavy in my arms and I look forward to my bed for the second time that night. This time I know once my head hits the pillow I’ll be out. As long as the bodies don’t keep me up.


	6. 6

I’ve run on less sleep, but I still feel my eyelids dragging down, and I rub the heel of my palm into my eyes. A yawn tries to push its way out of my mouth but I hold it back. If I’m going to last I need to get more than four hours of sleep. I left the make-up upstairs, except for some foundation. I have no idea what’s in store for me today, and the last thing I need to be concerned about is my mascara running. Save that until after they show me the secret handshake and I have a few less things to worry about.

I’m waiting with the rest of the insiders in command. Kai keeps side-eyeing me, and her companions, whom I now know as Jesse, the man with the shaved head who came close to becoming a eunuch yesterday, and Crunch, the horridly-named man with the bad bleach job. Apparently his forte is breaking noses, hence the name. Ironic, considering that’s the noise his wrist made yesterday when I twisted it around. There are a half dozen others in the room, but they haven’t made to introduce themselves and I’m not looking to stick my neck out just yet, even if it is just my name.

“Today’s the Choosing Ceremony. Time to initiate Phase 1.”

Phase 1 is the implementation of new initiate training criteria and rankings. Before, it wasn’t any surprise that one or two people would fail out at the initiate phase in Dauntless. People a little too ambitious for their capabilities, or failure to adjust. Erudite was the same way. Their testing standards were rigorous. Amity, as long as you had a smile on your face you were golden. Candors just needed to run their mouths all the time. And Abnegation accepted everyone so long as they were selfless. Even if they weren’t they were far too nice to kick anyone out.  
But even with all of that, the factions never intentionally eliminated people. Now we are. It was a competition before; now it’s a fight to the death. Those who ended up in the bottom ranks were automatically booted with no chance of recourse. Dauntless not only wants the best, but the most ruthless. Those willing to do whatever it takes to claw their way to the top and ensure their own survival. Because it wasn’t cutthroat already.

Dauntless, and Jeanine, wants conformists. Those willing to give their all for the factions. Willing to live and breathe the Dauntless bottom line. Those willing to be her soldiers. She needs blind followers. With this kind of cultivating, people will salivate at the sign of the cookie she’ll dangle in front of them.

“Bo,” Max says and turns to me, no hesitation on my new Dauntless-approved name. “I want you hands-on with combat training. Time to prove your game to us and the initiates.”

I nod. “Am I injecting anything new or following Dauntless standards?”

I didn’t mean for it to be me puffing up my plumage, but I realize too late what I’d just said and I can hear murmurs and see eye rolls out of the corner of my eye. I keep my eyes on Max.

“Eric will walk you through the new training techniques we’ll be using this year.” My eyes immediately hop to Eric and I see he’s already looking at me, his hands clasped behind his back. His look is impassive except for the tiny little quirk at the corner of his mouth. “We’ve worked with Jeanine with the new program, so I’m sure you’ll be familiar with a lot of it.”

“We’re weeding out the weak,” Eric says, his timbre a tangible thing racing around the room. “And the non-conformists.”

“Divergents,” Crunch says from his huddled corner.

Eric nods. “Stronger sims meant to draw them out, harder training to make them break. Until Jeanine finishes development of the upgraded equipment, we’ll need to use what’s already at our disposal.”

He means the scanners. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the labs, but I’d certainly seen those scanners. Just hold them up and it’ll give a reading on who is Divergent and how much. The software is still buggy; Erudite’s at least a year away from getting it right. But it’s coming. I need to rip the world to shreds before that happens. I won’t be able to hide when someone can just point a scanner at me. Then again, I’ve done a bang-up job of weaseling my way into Jeanine’s inner circle. No one would think a Divergent stupid enough to drop that far into the snake pit.

Call me a dunce.

“Abnegation is getting restless,” a woman says. I don’t know her name. As if reading my mind Kai leans over to me and whispers ‘Bennie.’ “Marcus can’t seem to shake those allegations and Jeanine’s at least getting into Candor with ousting him. It won’t be long now. Especially if anyone else transfers out, the illusion of perfection will be totally blown.” A smirk crawls along her face, her fingerless leather gloves creaking in the relative silence of the room.

“Hell, Four nearly rocked their world,” Jesse scoffs and it hits me in a moment of clarity.

I usually paid very little attention to Abnegation. In reality, they were pretty easy to forget if it weren’t for Jeanine constantly bitching about their total control of government. No, I don’t agree they should be our sole spokespeople in our government. Incorruptible my ass. They’re human; all one has to do is find the right pain point. No amount of selflessness would survive that. But no way in hell should Erudite be our sole leader either. Jeanine’s a megalomaniacal nutbag and shouldn’t even be in the position of power she’s currently in. 

Baby steps.

Four was a baby step. Or should I say Tobias. Tobias Eaton. Marcus’s kid. Our little world went nuts when he defected to Dauntless and the rumor mill exploded with allegations of abuse. As far as I know Tobias, Four, never spoke to any of it. Marcus certainly didn’t. Didn’t help that his wife died of mysterious circumstances and then Four? Not to mention even more rumors about Abnegation having a higher than average hit ratio of errors on testing, leading Jeanine to believe they’re holding more Divergents than any other faction.

It’s a coup. Plain and simple. Jeanine just needs to justify it to enough people to stand behind her and make it a success.

The rest of them will get a healthy injection of mind control serum Erudite’s cooking up in order to make them fall in line. No population is more easily controlled than those that are already biologically controlled.

“It’s perfect,” Eric says. “Rumor alone will crumble them. We’ll just be the storm to knock the wall down.”

His arms are crossed over his chest. Well-defined and incredibly muscular, it’s hard not to stare at them, especially when he’s wearing a t-shirt like he is now. I shift my eyes away quickly just as he turns toward me and I stare at anything but him as hard as I can. Crunch’s atrocious bleach job is rather mesmerizing.

“You’ve had additional training, haven’t you, Bo?” Eric’s voice draws my eyes back over to him. It’s only proper I look at him when he speaks as opposed to the ceiling tiles. “In recognizing when someone’s lying? Maybe hiding something?”

I nod, tucking my chin into my chest in an unnecessarily low dip in order to take that nanosecond to compose myself. When I look back up I hold his gaze. Not his forehead. Okay, maybe his forehead for about three seconds and his gaze the rest of the time. What the hell is wrong with me?

“I have. Everyone has a tell. It’s just a matter of finding it. Even in sims. If you know what to look for, you can catch it.”

“Good,” he says. “You’ll be our own little lie detector.” My knees would get weak at his straight-toothed smile if he weren’t talking about weeding out people like me. “Maybe you can give us some pointers.”

He cocks his head to the side ever so slightly, his eyebrow bar catching the light for a second, and I blink. I can’t tell if he’s needling or if he’s genuinely interested. I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s a test and what’s bringing me into the circle. Four last night. Test? Looking for lying pointers. Test? Somehow I feel like outside of a sim, Dauntless testing would be far more physical, and psychological in association with the physical, as opposed to genuine psychological testing. That’s more Erudite’s bag. Mess with someone’s head until they’re so turned around they think their mouth is on the bottom of their foot.

“This is where you give us some advise,” Kai adds, filling the silence I left behind after Eric’s statement.

“Yes, of course.” I clear my throat and cross my own arms over my chest, suddenly feeling a little chilly. “Some of the obvious tells would be touching their face, ears, lips. Looking up and away. A delay in response that would otherwise require very little thought. A disconnect in what they’re saying versus what they’re doing, like saying no but turning away from you. Trying to hide. For people who have recognized those things in themselves and have learned to hide them, you can look for something like pupil dilation, maybe some sweat on the upper lip. More physiological responses that are much harder to control without years of practice, something an initiate who may have just found out about their own Divergence wouldn't have had time to take up.”

It feels dirty just saying those things. Giving Dauntless the ammunition with which to fire at people just like me. But history tells me this is how to bring down a beast too big to attack from the outside. It needs to be from within, an insidious attack that will destroy it piece by piece, small enough to evade notice. Except when the beast finally recognizes it's grown weak, it’s too late. It’s already dying. So I give them all the information they need. The chances of them being successful with any of this is slim, not when they’re only half paying attention.

“Excellent, Bo. That should come in handy,” Max says, as if I’d just given him top secret intelligence. “You know what your duties are. Let’s get on with it. We’ll be overrun with initiates soon enough.”

Chairs squeak across the floor as people move and shift around the room, file out the door to whatever it is they’re doing today. Me, I’m with Eric and I’m really hoping he doesn’t notice the glisten of sweat on my temples. If he does I’ll chalk it up to my short night of sleep. Easy enough to pass off. And then hope he didn’t hear a thing I said about catching people in lies.

“So how does this work?” I ask as I walk up to him, trying my best not to saunter. In heels it would have been easy to sway my hips, but I’m in training boots and gear. I stomp, I don’t sway. “We shoot at them from the roof and watch how well they dance?”

He smiles and I watch it touch his eyes, the humor there trying to steal my breath but I hold onto it. I can’t let him take anything from me just yet.

“Something like that. No guns, but we’re going to the roof.” 

I follow him out of the room and move up next to him as we walk down the hallway. It’s more than wide enough for the two of us, but I find our shoulders nearly touching. He doesn’t move away and neither do I.

“I don’t remember you being this assertive,” he says, not looking at me.

“A lot can change in eight years,” I say, making a point to look at him, at the side of his well-defined face. 

A muscle in his jaw ticks and I trace his profile with my eyes, memorizing the curve of his nose and the fullness of his lips. I remember him being good-looking, but I never remember him being like this. I never found him mesmerizing. Maybe because I was never in his orbit. I never got in close enough to be sucked in. Now is not the time to board that space ship.

I feign a waver in my step and move away just enough so that our shoulders don’t brush. I see him look, frown down at his arm, and then face back forward.

“I guess it can.”

“You’re more serious than I remember you,” I say. “You used to smile more.”

I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t trying to be weepy or anything. It was a true statement. When we were younger, he was far more relaxed. He didn’t look like life was pressing in on him, or duty. Now he nearly looks made of stone and I have to chisel him out.

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “I still smile. Pass our tests and maybe you’ll see it more.”

I scoff and turn to look at him only to find his smirking face staring right at me. The fine lines around his eyes groove deeply into his skin, showing the stress he’s been under. Still, I laugh.

“You say that like you’re a prize and that I’d even want to win you.”

He opens the door to the stairs and we climb, me staring steadfastly at the stairs as Eric walks in front of me. “It’ll be the light at the end of your tunnel after what I’m going to put you through.”

“You say that,” I murmur, breathing deeply as I climb stair after stair. “But why would I want to keep seeing your face if it’s going to be the one to put me through hell for the sake of proving a point?”

The door at the top of the stairs squeals open and I wince at the light flooding in from the roof. Clouds must have cleared from earlier. A breeze whips past me, flinging my hair around my head as I follow Eric onto the roof. A few people are already there waiting for us.

He turns back to me before joining them. “Because it’ll be me that ends your hell.”

There’s humor in his tone, but not much. Someone announces a coming train and I turn to look to find the auto train coming toward us on the tracks. I know that train doesn’t stop, and a sinking feeling in my gut tells me how everyone on that train is going to need to get off.

“For those who were able to get on the train,” Eric says as he hops up on the ledge of the building, confident and sure of himself and his balance. “Let’s see who’s willing to get off.”


	7. 7

I turn and watch the train approach. Heads stick out of the open doors. Many are Dauntless but a few in blues and whites litter the crowd and my stomach drops. I don’t get why the faction does this. I don’t get why they do half the things they do. Another way to weed out the weak, I imagine. Although I’m sure people don’t sign up for this. If they knew I doubt they’d be so eager. And I’m sure Dauntless would become rather inbred.

Once the train hits the roof we stand on bodies start flying out of the cars. Those used to the jump tuck and roll and get right back up, no worse for wear. The rest, the recruits, they flop. Slide. Slam into the debris scattered on the roof. A swatch of gray catches my eye and at first I can’t believe my eyes. No way would someone from Abnegation, a Stiff, as the rest of the factions call them, would defect.

Then I remember Four and I wonder if this recruit was running from something like he was. If she wasn’t she’s sure in for a rude awakening.

People keep jumping and I watch as one boy falls short, grabbing onto the ledge in his struggle. His white jacket catches the light and I know in my gut he will not make it. Everything in me screams to go help him. Yank him onto the safety of the roof. But that’s not Dauntless and I, too, am under scrutiny. I’m no better than these green recruits huddling around us. I need to prove myself too if I’m to get anything done. If I’m to save anyone.

His head disappears below the ledge and his hands are quick to follow. The rumbling train eats up his screams and I thankfully don’t hear him hit the ground. I flinch as the last wheel smashes by in the tracks and pull myself together before turning around to the group.

Eric’s already started talking. All I catch is everyone needing to jump. I lean on the ledge and peer over the building to the drop below us. In the ground in a huge hole. Black. There’s no seeing what’s there to catch anyone. If anything. No way are they forcing everyone to jump to their deaths. That’d just be downright stupid. It’s a leap of faith. First test of bravery. It’s a ten story drop, at least. Enough to rattle the strongest resolve if they’re not prepared for it. Judging by the panicked looks on the recruit faces around me, none of them are prepared for this. Not even the Dauntless born.

One girl speaks up. The Stiff. She steps forward to a catcall from Candor and she’s shaky pulling herself up to standing on the ledge, right where Eric was before he jumped down. Eric goads her, but she remains silent. Then she steps off without so much as a peep. The Stiff just showed up this entire group of Dauntless recruits. Someone’s got to sack up and take the next jump.

It isn’t long before a Dauntless born does, and the rest fall in line afterward. I’m surprised. Everyone actually makes the leap. No one chickens out. I ignore the thought of the corpse on the sidewalk in front of this building and mentally applaud this group of people who literally just dove headfirst into the unknown. Great metaphor. Points for Dauntless.

“I expected at least one to bail,” Eric says as he walks over to me, nearly crowding into me as he heads toward the stairs.

I shrug. “Shows they at least have a shred of common sense. We didn’t recruit them to kill them so it’s just a matter of getting over the height.”

I turn around and head toward the stairs myself, painfully aware of Eric’s body at my shoulder.

“We?” he says, a laugh tinging his tone.

He stands a full head taller than me and the sun sears a glare into my eyes when I look at him. A smirk pulls up his lip as he watches my face. “The longer I separate myself from Dauntless, the more separate I’ll stay. Less you, more we. I need to start somewhere.”

“Yeah, you do.”

My gut reacts a nanosecond too late and Eric’s thick arms are around me, pinning me to his body. With more warning I could have just stepped out of his reach. Now I’m bound to him and struggling to throw him off. I step back into him and he steps away, anticipating my move. He won’t let me use his weight against him. More points for Dauntless. It’s something he should know.

So I wrap myself further around him, twining my leg with his and putting weight into his knee and I go limp. His arms slip from my shoulders to my neck. Bad move for me, but I press harder into his knee with my weight and he caves enough for me to slip out, but he’s fast. Incredibly strong fingers wrap around my wrist and yank me toward him, but I move, jamming my feet into his chest and sending him backward. Away from me. Out of reach.

Only someone else is behind me. Far smaller than Eric. Squirrelly, but still strong. They’re easy enough to send over my shoulder, but two more are taking the guy’s place and Eric’s back. The guy I flung is on his feet and I’m being cornered by four Dauntless. I have no idea what they plan to do, but if they all attack at once I’m screwed.

They move as one and eight hands are on me. Arms are around me.

Shit.

No matter how much I squirm I can’t get out. Eric’s at my head, arms wrapped around my shoulders with me pinned to his chest. Another person’s at my middle, anchoring my arms to my body. A third guy’s got my legs. They hold me tight, but I don’t make it easy for them.

Until Eric grabs my chin in a vise grip and if I move it feels like my neck might crack.

His lips brush my ear, his breath hot on my skin. He presses the side of his head into mine and I shift away, but have nowhere to go.

“Welcome to Dauntless,” he whispers.

I’m at the ledge. Wind whips at my skin and I catch glimpses of nothing underneath me. They count as one from three and at one nothing but cold holds me. I scrabble for the ledge but it’s ripped out of my hands. I smash into the side of the building and roll in my tumble before I free fall.

Not prepared. Not prepared.

I’ve base jumped from so much farther up but I’ve never been thrown from a building. Air chokes me and I pray I land in some way that doesn’t break me too badly. All I need to do is land head first and it doesn’t matter what’s catching me. I’m dead.

My back catches air and I’m face up, barely even seeing what’s over me. I can’t tell if they’re watching me fall. Air rushes out of my lungs as I hit a net and bounce, getting flung up into the air before coming back down again.

“The hell?”

The voice breaks through the ringing in my head and I lie on the net with my eyes closed for a second, trying to coax my heart back down to a normal rhythm. Trying not to let it explode.

I let my guard down. I shouldn’t have and this is what happened. Eric threw me off of a roof in a bid for my own special initiation into their group. Fan-fucking-tastic. I’ll make sure he never sees my back again. I may not win every fight but lessons only take one go around before they sink in. As they should.

“Didn’t realize you were a recruit.”

With far too much effort I open my eyes and turn my head to see Four walking back over to the net. He grabs the edge and without effort I roll into him. I brace a hand on his shoulder and he puts a hand on my waist to help me down.

“Yeah, well, I’m a newbie same as them.” I nod to the backs of the recruits walking out of this little staging area. “I didn’t earn my place here.” I stage-whisper to him as we walk after them. “I guess throwing me off a roof takes me one step closer to acceptance.”

“Lucky you,” he says.

“Lucky me.”

Pain throbs in my shoulder and I reach back to feel my jacket shredded. I must have smacked nice and hard into the wall on the way down. I pull my hand back around and see blood. Day one and I’m already cut open. So much for Dauntless preying on my weaknesses. I’m failing already.

Four looks at my back and then brings his head back around. “You should have the infirmary look at that. If nothing else they’ll be able to clean it out better than you can.”

I nod and watch him head toward the group of recruits, away from where I need to go. It doesn’t take much wandering to find the infirmary. Not surprising it’s near the training areas.

The room is empty, but all the lights are on, casting a sterile, harsh glare over the entire room. A line of chaise beds dot one wall and cabinets fill another. A windowed door leads off somewhere else. A man sits on a stool, writing something in a chart, when he looks up at me. If the guy has any modifications I can’t see them. In fact he looks rather plain in these Dauntless surroundings. Still in all black, no white lab coat for him, but his short sleeves and neatly trimmed hair reveal a normal guy. Older. Maybe my dad’s age. I wonder if he got stuck with this job.

He doesn’t utter a word. Just stares up at me. So I show him my shoulder.

“Can you just make sure this is clean?”

Still silent, he rolls over to a cabinet and grabs a bottle and some cotton along with a pair of gloves. I pull my jacket off and pull my shirt over my head just far enough to reveal the scrapes. All the injuries I’ve had, I learned a long time ago to check shame at the door when dealing with medical personnel. They’ve dealt with far worse than women’s underwear.

Pain flashes hot across my skin as he pokes and prods the wound, pulling it apart to make sure it’s clear. Without warning cotton presses into the scrapes, I’m assuming drenched in whatever cleaning solution he’s using. Acid, it feels like. I grind my teeth together to keep my voice in my mouth. I will not cry out even though I want to screech.

“A lot of scrapes but they’re not deep. Stay off your back.”

A cool salve smears across my back and I can’t help but wonder if that was innuendo or not. When I pull my clothes back on and turn around he’s not even looking at me. He’s sitting back down, his face hovering over a pad. Doodles litter the pages.

Definitely stuck here.

Keeping my own silence I walk out of the infirmary, leaving the guy to his own stewing devices. I make my way to command and find Eric and Max there, Kai standing against the far wall. She sees me and a smile crawls across her face. Eric and Max turn to look and the corner of Eric’s mouth twitches, his eyes flashing.

“How nice of you to drop in,” Kai says, trying to contain her laughter. “First day’s tough, huh? I know how hard it can be to fall into a position.”

The smile Eric’s kept contained leaks out, letting a few teeth peek through. Max is stone-faced.

“That’s good, Kai,” I say. “How long did it take you to come up with those gems?”

“Don’t be bitter,” she says. “That’s only the beginning.”

“Then I’ll make sure to try and stay awake for the rest. Maybe I’ll bring a book, give myself something to do.”

I feel her sneer from where I stand. But instead of addressing me again she turns to Max. “Am I done?”

He nods and Kai leaves without another word. Without another look in my direction. She tries to shove into my injured shoulder but I step out of her way, making her look like she missed her step. She speeds up her walk and leaves the room.

“You need a new jacket?” Eric asks and I turn back to him.

He walks closer to me and I hold his gaze. Or he holds mine. He twirls his fingers, motioning for me to turn around, but I hold my ground. I won’t turn my back on him again.

“Are you going to show me your back?” He tries to keep a laugh out of his voice and fails.

“So you can stab it?”

His smile nearly buckles my knees but I tense my legs and make damn sure they’re holding me up. The fact that his smile crinkles the corners of his eyes melts my insides. Shit. What is he doing to me?

“I’m pretty sure if I tried that now you wouldn’t let me get very far. Besides,” he turns to Max. “Max won’t help me.”

“Eric said they had to overpower you,” Max says, his features softening.

It makes me wonder if either of them actually want to do this to me, or if they’re putting on a show.

I nod. “I’m good, but not simultaneously attacked by four people good.”

“Turn around, will you?”

Eric’s voice is casual and made of velvet. Dare I say a bedroom voice? God, stop it. Stop it, Madeline. Bo. Stop it, Bo.

So I turn around, my stance wide, my arms at my sides. Ready. Fingers shift around the tears in the fabric, find the wound, and I immediately stiffen. I don’t make any noise, but the hand on my back lifts and I quickly turn back around.

“Not too bad,” Eric says.

“For getting thrown off a roof.”

He shrugs. “That’s what, a regular Tuesday for you?”

I quirk an eyebrow. “Thursdays are for base jumping, actually.”

He laughs then proffers a hand in front of me. “I’ll take you to com and show you our dining room. I think you’ve earned a better meal tonight.”

So the plebs are separated from the nobles. I shouldn’t be surprised. I wait and he waits, his hand still out. I cross my arms over my chest and he shakes his head before dropping it and walking in front of me out the door.

“Lucky me,” I say as I make sure to keep my eyes trained on the back of his head.


	8. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thanks to everyone leaving kudos and comments on my story! I'm glad you're enjoying it! I hope it only gets better from here. Let them eat cake! :)

The commissary looks like my closet when I was twelve. If there’s order here I don’t see it. Not immediately. But Eric walks with a purpose, grabs something without hesitation, and hands it to me. I shake out the folded cloth and see it’s the same jacket I’m wearing, just without the shredded shoulder. I look back around the com, and at first the field of black swims in my vision, but then the layout starts to make a little bit of sense.

Where Eric pulled out the jacket lay a bunch of piles all with similar collars, zippers, sleeves crossed in front. Smashed in next to it are piles of shirts. No collars. No zippers. Short sleeves. Next to those are long-sleeved thermals. Pants, vests, bags. Piece by piece the chaos of the room slots into place and starts to make a modicum of sense.

“You’ll get used to it,” he says and walks away, leaving me in the pile of clothes.

I swap out jackets as I follow him, tossing my damaged one in a barrel we pass.

“Dining room’s on the fifth floor between command and the apartments.” He looks behind himself and to me, maybe waiting for a response. I’ve been keeping at least three feet of space between the two of us as we walk, but the way he stares at me closes that gap right up. “We’re not going to kill you, you know. At least not purposely.”

We file into a stairwell and start the climb. “That is so reassuring,” I say, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “I’ll sleep so much better tonight.”

His laugh echoes in the stairwell and it’s an effort to keep the smile from my face. At least he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. I don’t think. 

“No one gets an easy ride into Dauntless. They need to make sure you know that.”

I stop on the landing, my hand on the railing. Eric climbs a few more stairs before he realizes its only his steps echoing along the cement. He stops and turns to face me. “Are you fucking kidding me, Eric? You know,” I rub my fingers into my temple, trying to will away the blooming pain there. “I know we haven’t talked since our Choosing Ceremony but you’re one of Jeanine’s closest. You of all people know the shit I’ve gone through. You all had eight weeks of training. I’ve had eight years. And now I have to prove myself all over again?”

Frustrated wouldn’t even begin to explain my feelings right now. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to rip the railing clean out of the ground and smash it against the stairs. I didn’t sign on to be initiated by shitheads who had a tenth of the experience I do.

Eric takes a step down but stays more than an arm’s length away from me. That’s probably for the best. “They don’t know that. They have Jeanine’s word you’re capable but she’s still Erudite. And so are you. Max vouched for you but what’s he going to do? Tell everyone to go easy? They’re a bunch of soldiers, and if they’re going to put their lives in someone’s hands they’re going to need to test it for themselves.”

“You’re just as Erudite as I am,” I say.

He nods. No sense in him denying it. “But I’m here. I was an initiate just like those who jumped today. You weren’t.”

“You still don’t trust me.”

It wasn’t a question. He turns around and continues up the stairs. I follow a moment later. The statement hangs heavy between us for a floor before he finally answers.

“No,” he says without turning around. “I didn’t know Madeline very well and Bo still has some Erudite to shake off. Maybe then.”

He stops at a door and holds it open while I climb the remaining stairs. This time I just walk through it. My skin still prickles when I do and my muscles tense as I walk past him. But I let it go. I could be wrong, but I think Eric just gave me some advice. I’ll take it.

Food smells waft down the hallway and my mouth immediately waters. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I smelled the food. I walk through the door of the dining room and stop.

No, it’s nothing like mess. Not even close.

It’s not formal by any sense of the word, but where mess is in an underground, windowless hole crammed with too many people trying to talk at once, leadership dining is subdued. Quiet. And plopped in an atrium. It’s a similar view to what I see in my apartment, just lower on the skyline. We’re hemmed in by deteriorating buildings, crumbling little by little as we sit here and eat. But the way the sun blankets light across the city I can’t help but marvel. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, it still takes my breath away.

Kai and Crunch are already in the room, along with a few faces I don’t recognize. Everyone stops when I walk in, plates held up, forks and knives in hand, and they stare. Eric ignores it all, walks to the buffet and grabs a plate. The silence is broken only by his scraping utensils as he piles food onto his plate.

“Little early, don’t you think?” Kai asks Eric as she keeps her eyes on me.

Eric finishes what he’s doing before slowly turning to face the room, but before he can say anything Max walks up behind me. His presence is almost comforting. A voice of reason among these hyenas.

“Right on time,” he says as he nudges me into the room.

I take the cue and follow in Eric’s footsteps, keeping my eyes on the food. It’s not leaps and bounds better than what’s in mess. There are just a few more options. More meat. More vegetables. A larger helping of dessert. My weakness. I plan on attacking that later.

When I turn back to the room I see the only seat left is one next to Kai. I keep the moan on the inside and walk over. Only when I go to pull the chair out it snags on something, Kai’s foot probably, and tips on its back, clattering to the floor. I roll my eyes and right the chair while Kai turns red from trying not to laugh.

“Brilliant,” I say. “You going to loosen the top on the salt shaker next?”

“Watch it, newbie,” she snarls. “Or there won’t be a next time.”

I finish cutting the piece of meat on my plate, frown, and look to her. “You were at the bottom of your initiate class, weren’t you?” All expression on her face melts, replaced with a look of stone. “You were the constant butt of jokes. Barely scraping by. Yet you managed. And here you are. Taking your shots while you can?”

“You don’t know shit,” she spits, and I brush the invisible spray from my sleeve. “Especially since you were placed here.”

My response is slotting together in my head when Max breaks into our lovely little conversation. “Bo, why don’t you tell us about some of your training. Maybe we can use it on this new batch of initiates.”

I slide my eyes away from Kai and put on my most endearing smile for Max. I nearly laugh, but instead just allow my smile to grow wider. “I don’t think they’d survive what I went through.”

“Fucking showoff,” Kai mumbles.

I turn to her. “Speak up, Kai. Make sure everyone hears what you just said.”

She places her fork and knife down on the plate and turns to look at me. Slowly. “Fucking. Showoff.”

Every word she speaks is enunciated, overstated for my enjoyment. And I smile. But before I can offer up my own retort Eric speaks up.

“What was the hardest test you went through?”

I look at him. “Mentally or physically?” I’m not asking to be snide. They're two separate questions, both leaving different kinds of scars.

“Physically,” he says.

I put my own utensils down and I desperately want to stare at my plate when I speak. Hide my eyes to keep people from seeing how broken I really am. Instead I hold Eric’s gaze and look from face to face as I tell my short little story.

“I got drugged a lot. I’d wake up hours later in some unknown place and have to crawl my way out of it. Or climb. Jump. Whatever. Shaking off the drugs while trying not to die was always difficult. The worst one was waking up upside down, dangling by a rope from one of the taller buildings in the ruins. Not sure how many floors up I was. Fifty, maybe? Bound. Gagged. I had to get back down to the ground. Alive. And once I got there I had to dodge shooters. Snipers. IEDs. None of it was supposed to be live. IEDs should have been flash bangs. Bullets should have been rubber at best.”

Eric is made of stone. I don’t think he even blinked the entire time I’ve spoken. His fists rest on the table. Not clenched, but he’s certainly not relaxed. Everyone else around the table is riveted. I have their full attention. No one’s chewing. Hardly anyone is blinking.

I turn to Kai, in a move that’s so grossly melodramatic I have to force myself not to laugh. But she needs to back up off me and this is probably the one way that’ll do it.

I grab my collar and pull it to the right, revealing my shoulder and the twisted knot of scarring that’s hidden there. I was hit on the run, from behind. It’s a neat little hole on the back of my shoulder. What I’m showing is a gnarled mess of an exit wound that still aches when it rains. 

“They weren’t. This was Jeanine’s eighteenth birthday present to me. Happy fucking birthday.”

I release the collar and let the shirt slide back into place. The fork and knife are back in my hand and I’m the first one chewing by at least thirty seconds. When I look back around the table a few heads are bent, forks poking around at food. The rest, Eric and Kai included, keep staring at me. Kai’s mouth is slightly agape and I have an overwhelming urge to throw a pea into it.

“Jeanine wasn’t kidding when she said she put you through the wringer,” Max says, a feeble attempt to lighten the mood after I just painted it black.

I smile. A tight-lipped smirk that doesn’t reach my eyes, and I shrug. “That’s what I keep saying. I mean I guess I have a million and one reasons to lie just trying to fit in here. But only assholes lie about that kind of stuff.”

I look to Eric but his gaze is slightly off. Just a little low. He’s looking at my shoulder. Seeing the scarring now hidden by my shirt. He doesn’t look back up at my face before his food commands his attention once again.

The table is quiet for a couple of minutes, nothing but scraping utensils and slurping breaking the silence, until someone excitedly blurts out some bit of information they found out earlier about something and the tension in the room deflates. A breath that had been collectively held is let go and everyone slouches just a little bit.

I finish my meal without saying anything else. No one says anything when I get up and place my plate on a waiting tray. I grab a slice of cake and a clean fork and leave the room without looking at anyone, without looking behind.

It isn’t long before I hear boots tapping behind me.

“Madeline.” The name makes me flinch and I hear an annoyed breath of air breeze out of Eric’s mouth as he realizes his mistake. “Bo.”

At that I stop and turn around, cake in one hand, fork in the other. I hope I don’t have to use either. I really want some cake.

“It’s a start,” he says as he walks up to me.

His fingers press into the small of my back, guide me along. Urge me to keep walking as he walks along next to me. Heat flares where his fingers touch my flesh. I want them to keep touching. I look at the cake and all I can think is where I can lick icing from and I lower the plate down. Hold it at my waist. Get it away from my face. Heat flares in my cheeks and I rub my wrist on my forehead to hide it, hoping Eric doesn’t notice. 

“Great,” I say, feigning indifference.

It’s not that I necessarily want to be accepted by everyone in that room. I just want to get over this initiation hump. My mind wanders back to the cake. I really shouldn’t have thought the word ‘hump.’

“They might even go a little easier on you.”

I look over to him out of the corner of my eye and I see a playful little smile flitting across his face. He’s making a joke. I think.

“Oh?” My eyebrows perk up, my eyes going wide. “It’ll only be a three story building I’m thrown from next time?”

I climb the stairs to the apartments and my heart thunders with each step Eric makes on the stairs behind me.

“Something like that,” he says, a smile thick in this voice. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s still there.

The door to our floor looms ahead of me and Eric hovers close behind. I can feel the heat from his body on my back and I want to just stand there and warm myself in it. Instead I throw open the door and keep walking. I stop in front of my door and take a bite of cake. Dear god, it’s the perfect combination of fluffy and sweet and I want to drown in it. For a second I forget Eric is even there and I close my eyes, savoring the flavor.

Until he walks up to me, crowds over me. I open my eyes and I see his chest. He’s a good ten inches taller than I am and my eyes scale his chest as they crawl up to see his face. A chest that ripples his shirt with his muscles. And here I have cake in my hand.

“Dauntless has the best cake,” he says as he watches my face. “Don’t worry about your initiation too much. It shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle.”

I press the fork into the cake and ladle another piece, ready to take a bite. Except Eric snatches the fork and puts it into his mouth. He drags the fork down across his lip and smiles before walking away. With my fork.

“What am I supposed to eat this with? Hey!”

He keeps his back to me and waves the fork in the air. “You’ve dangled from a skyscraper and survived. I’m sure you can figure it out. Oh-six-hundred tomorrow in the Pit.”

I watch his black-clad form retreat into the shadows before turning a corner, leaving me in the empty hallway with no fork. I look down at the cake and think about my training, my initiation, Eric’s chest. His smile. His lips under that fork.

Goddamn cake.


	9. 9

Two weeks and not even a shove. I’m starting to freak out. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the next test. See how far they can push my paranoia before I completely lose it.

We’ve separated the initiates between Dauntless-born and transfers. I’m with the transfer girls, helping them build up their incredibly weak upper bodies. I know what’s coming and they’ll need all the help they can get. 

The Stiff struggles with the barbell, one arm pushing up higher than the other. I stroll over to the bar and lift it up for her so she doesn’t crush herself. I’ve been told I should just let them hurt themselves. It’s just a sign of weakness. I argued that point. Some of our strongest soldiers aren’t Dauntless-born and it wouldn’t behoove us to let the transfer initiates founder. I remember looking at Eric when I said that. I thought of Four. Neither born in Dauntless. So when I see someone about to crush her windpipe under a too-heavy weight I’ll make sure she at least doesn’t die by her own fatigued hand. I was able to get that much leeway, at least.

In just the couple of weeks they’ve been at it I can see the improvements. I know they can feel it too. But I doubt it’ll be enough.

“Bo!”

Eric’s voice rings across the training room and I look over to find him standing in one of the rings, barefoot, down to a sleeveless shirt. He waves me over and my stomach drops. I’m sure I can hold my own against him, but not without taking a few hits. I’m confident in myself, but I’m also confident that one punch from Eric’s fist can also kill me if landed right.

At least now my paranoia’s gone. Here’s another test. After I’ve settled into my own little training world, I’m guessing they were hoping I’d let my guard down a little bit, I’d get dragged back into the spotlight. In front of everyone.

Time to prove myself. I hope no one can see me shake.

Without speaking I walk over to the ring and remove my boots and jacket, keeping on my regimental workout clothes, fitting but maneuverable. If only they were plated in steel. The last thing I need is to take a hit to the gut and immediately puke on him. That’s mortifying for multiple reasons.

“In the real world you’re not going to be evenly matched. You need to be prepared to fight anyone,” Eric says, projecting his voice to the forming crowd. “Throw away your preconceived notions about who not to hit. Get over size. Learn to fight right and you can fight anyone.”

“So we’re going to watch you beat the crap out of a woman half your size?”

It’s one of the Candor initiates, Christina. Friends with the Stiff. What’s her name? Beatrice? Tris. That’s it. Candor still hasn’t learned to keep her mouth shut. That’ll come around to bite her sooner rather than later.

Eric smiles, this leering ooze of a smile that slithers into a sneer. “Like I said. Learn to fight right.”

Now I look at her, an eyebrow raised. “Give me a little more credit than that. The bigger you are the harder you fall.”

Sometimes I believe that. Other times, like this one, I’m just trying to make myself feel better before a beating. I’ve been in enough sparing rings to know what kind of opponent I’m up against. I know when I can win, when I will lose, and when we’re evenly matched. If I can keep Eric from using brute strength against me, we’re evenly matched. If not, I may walk away missing some teeth. I wonder how good Dauntless dentistry is.

“You ready for this?” he mumbles under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear, before lunging.

A fist comes flying at my face and I jerk out of the way, using Eric’s momentum against him and cuffing his ear as he stumbles by. He tugs on his earlobe as he rights himself and I watch him recover. He bounces from foot to foot, never stops moving.

I haven’t gotten a chance to see him fight yet. I don’t know any of his weaknesses. I don’t need to be creative to imagine some of his strengths. 

He shifts again and I dodge a powerful blow and land one of my own into his kidney as I swing around. Straight into his elbow. I feel the inside of my cheek tear across my teeth and my mouth fills with blood. My ear rings with the collision of bone on bone and I stumble away from him.

When I pull myself up I walk to the edge of the ring and spit out a mouthful of blood, wipe it off my cheek and smear it on my shirt. No more defense.

I fake a kick and connect my fist to his face, catching his chin. I see blood arc out of his mouth as his head swings around. Then I do bring my knee up into his stomach and he makes a satisfying _oomph_ as he double over with the impact. I bring my knee up when he’s down and smash it into his face. That’ll leave a mark.

I scuttle away, leaving him to recover. When he looks up to me his eyes are lit with fury and his face is purpling already. I feel a small hint of satisfaction, a slight swell of pride.   
Until he’s on me.

Fingers dig into the pressure point in my shoulder. At first his mark is off, then it’s spot on and my eyes flash white and I drop to my knees without even thinking, the pressure in my shoulder pulsing white-hot pain throughout my body.

For a second I lose it. He’s on me, his full weight clean on top of my body, weighing me down. I can’t get a breath and in that second I panic. An automatic response that I can’t help. Until I can.

The world clears up and I see what I need to do. One of the only things I can do when I’m being overpowered.

I lock him down into me, pinning his arms at my sides with my own. Then in a fluid movement I grab his shirt and yank it up his back while shoving my arm under his neck to grab his collar. I lift myself up to position and then throw down, dropping him onto my arm, his own weight working against him as I hold him to me with his shirt.

I hear his gasps in my ear. See his face turn red from the choke. Voices around the ring penetrate our little body bubble, slithering in between the gasps and the gurgles and the grunts.

But he gets an arm out before succumbing. Maybe he’s nearly there. With how wild he swings I don’t think I’m too far off the mark. But his next throw hits the side of my face and pain explodes in my head. My vision swims black for a moment, but not before my legs do all the work I need them to as they kick into his chest and send him reeling back.

I hear his gasp from where I lie and I take in my own heaping lungfuls of air.

“Enough,” a familiar voice says as footsteps tap across the mats.

“Aww. It was just getting good,” someone says from the crowd. I can’t bring myself to sit up and see who it was. Who am I kidding? I’m seeing double of everything right now. I’d see nothing even if I could lift myself up.

“Sometimes you’ll meet your match,” the authoritative voice says as a hand slides into mine and I get yanked to my feet.

For a second the world spins and sways underneath me and I drop my hands to my knees to steady myself.

“Sometimes you’ll realize you’re not as good as you thought you were,” that same voice says.

It’s a stab to my gut and when I look up I see a blurry, kneeling Eric shove away the helping hand in front of him and pull himself up.

“Hope you were taking notes,” Eric says, his mouth sounding a little stuffed. “This will be you soon enough. And there won’t be anyone around to call a draw.”

Ice flows across my skin and I stand back up and try to hide the chill that ripples through me. Me and Eric, we can hold our own. We’ll beat each other to a pulp and keep slapping at each other as we’re bleeding on the ground. But the initiates? Dauntless-born and transfers alike? They’re going to annihilate each other.

My vision clears and I look around the room and see the sea of faces. Some are concerned, and rightly so. Some of my girls look just as menacing as the guys, but the rest are worried. And they should be. They could end up dead.

Eric’s off the mat and walking out of the training room by the time I’m stepping down and grabbing my boots.

“Get over to the infirmary. Make sure he didn’t knock anything loose,” Four’s voice whispers into my ear.

I tug on a boot and look at him. “What about him? He doesn’t have to worry?”

I say it with a smirk on my face but I half mean it too. I don’t need some guardian angel looking out for me. I’m fully capable of looking out for myself.

Four smirks back at me. “Where do you think he’s going?”

I smile as I pull on my jacket and wince as I lean my neck in a very wrong direction. Infirmary. Right. Four walks in a separate direction and I follow Eric out of the training arena, trying not to let anyone hear my moans.

He's already on a bed when I walk in and the doctor, the same guy who saw to my back, waves me over to a bed next to Eric. I plop down and grab the edges of the bed, waiting for the world to stop spinning. There could be some concussion in there.

"You look about how I feel," he says through an even more swollen mouth than before.

"I'll take that as a compliment," I say as I lean back with the ice pack the doctor just handed me. I do all I can to hide my groan as I place the cooling relief on my burning face, but it doesn't work. I think I hear him chuckle before he utters his own groan of pain. "Something funny?"

"I had my doubts," he mumbles and I turn to look at him. It takes a second for the blurry vision to fade and his face to come into focus, but when it does I see his eyes are clear. Surrounded by bruises in various shades of red and blue, but clear. "Not any more."

"Oh yeah? Were you expecting just a punch or two and I'd be out?" I shift the ice pack around as a shadow hovers over me. Fingers poke into my flesh, pull back my cheek, prod very sensitive parts of me that I don't want touched right now.

He shrugs. "Yes. Can you blame me?" The doctor walks over to him and does the same and I watch Eric wince with each probe. Eventually he slaps the doctor's hand away and the man leaves without saying a word.

My mouth curls up into a little smile. Or what I think is a little smile. It's hard to tell around the swelling. "I didn't take you for someone who doubted Jeanine. She did say I could handle myself."

"Not doubt," he says. "Just . . . Over-exaggeration, maybe. But that's not the case, is it?"

"Obviously not.I wouldn't have come into this snake pit without being prepared. Are you kidding me?"

He tries to laugh but he can't get it around his swollen face. He turns away then, rolling onto his back and closing his eyes. "You're going to come in really handy. I hope you're ready."

I think of the boy who fell to his death jumping from the train. I think of the deaths piling up, buried somewhere in Dauntless headquarters. I think of my own Divergence and what the man next to me would do to me if he found out. I think of my plants throughout the ruins, my contacts, my supplies, the coming war started by Jeanine's hand. I'm not ready of any of this.

I take a deep breath and say, "More than I'll ever be."


	10. 10

We’re firmly into fall, but the air is convinced it’s winter. As I run I try to force my way through the bitter chill as it tries to crystalize my lungs, but even I have a hard time breathing. This isn’t my first run in the cold, but for me it doesn’t get easier. We all have our weaknesses. This is one of mine. And cake, obviously.

For as much of a party time Dauntless wants to be perceived as being, life actually starts pretty early in the den, especially when there are initiates to train. I’m sure many of them would gladly take hits to the face instead of being rudely awakened before dawn. Like they get a choice.

Which means I have to be even earlier. It’s barely four in the morning. Too early even for initiate torture. I’m burning through the ruins, places I know like the back of my hand, where I need little more than moonlight to guide my way. Still, I have infrared on me, just in case. It’ll allow me to see without letting others see too much of me. I’ll take it. No sense in putting a spotlight on me if I don’t have to.

Somewhere out in neutral territory that doesn’t belong to any faction but still falls within the fence, is my stash. My secrets hidden under a rock where only my closest Factionless associate knows to look. We hardly ever meet in person. Far too risky, and the intel I have isn’t incredible enough to usually warrant a face-to-face visit. This morning’s no different.

On a piece of paper triggered to ignite sixty seconds after unfolding, I have written information about the new initiate training, the increase in Dauntless deaths, initiate eliminations. I don’t have anything new from Jeanine. I haven’t seen her since my own transfer. But this will whet their appetites. Plus I know they’re getting information from additional sources. It would be dumb of them to only have me.

It’s dumb of me to even be doing this. Considering how much scrutiny I’m under from Dauntless and Jeanine, I wouldn’t put it past them to follow me, to get a bird in the sky and report back on what I’m doing.

But they’re not that paranoid yet. I haven’t given them any reasons to doubt my loyalty like that. I’m still the perfect soldier in their eyes. Well, Jeanine’s, at least. Maybe Eric and Max are coming around. I’m less than stellar to the rest still. It’s a slow process.

Luckily for me I’m smart and the Factionless are invested in protecting my interests as well as theirs. They know I’m too valuable of a resource and the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all of that. Our society has been conditioned to hate them, and Jeanine is injecting a hard-on into the world for Divergents like me. She’s created her own insurgency, her own army with which to fight against. I’m playing the arms dealer.

Well, not quite yet. Right now I’m just intelligence with one or two supply divergences to the Factionless. The stockpiling hasn’t truly begun yet. But it will soon.

I slow to a brisk walk, and then a slow meander as I come upon my stash. I’m willing to bet my life no one but only the one person who should know does know about it. Still, I’m not willing to just sprint up to my spot and expose it to the world. Lucky I’m not, because as I come to the corner of the nearest building and peek my head around, I see something that makes my breath stop.

Night is darkest before the dawn, but the shadow that stands against the dark is even darker. I can’t make out features; all I see is an outline, but once he steps into the moonlight the blue light casts enough shine on his face for me to see. My Factionless contact. Emmanuel.

When we first started this dangerous game we were going to remain anonymous to each other. Until one day when we got the timing on a patrol wrong and we both were nearly exposed. If it weren’t for my quick thinking, neither of us would be alive now. At that moment we both figured names weren’t too much to ask. At least just first names.

I step out of my protective shadows and meet him halfway, stepping around crushed chunks of cement and rusted rebar to get to him. Eight years and I don’t think we’ve said eighty words to each other. We never needed to. And right now, the look on his face, shadowed by moonlight, says more than words ever could. But that doesn’t keep him from talking.

“We need to amp it up.”

I shake my head. “I don’t have enough from Dauntless. There’s something going on, but I need time to figure out what. Besides, Jeanine doesn’t have her weapons ready yet. We have a year at least before anything comes down from Erudite. Trust me on that.”

Emmanuel barely moves. I don’t even think he blinks. “There was a raid.”

I frown, not allowing myself to understand what he’s saying. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Madeline.”

I do. Dauntless raids on the Factionless aren’t unusual. Hell, they practically did it for fun. What else are they going to do around here? The Factionless are their biggest threat as far as most of them are concerned. But raids are usually no more than blatant shows of force. Someone might get a black eye or a broken nose, but that’s the extent of it.

“Five are dead,” he says, breaking through my internal rationalization. “Including two children. Dauntless is making a statement.”

Jeanine placed me in Dauntless to make sure her coup against Abnegation goes according to plan. That’s been my focus. But obviously I’ve missed something. I didn’t hear something. Or I haven’t been invited to the right meetings.

Regardless, my flesh goes cold, colder than the air around me, and I shiver despite myself. As if the body count in my new faction wasn’t bad enough. Now they’re amping up their raids. And the Factionless are paying a hearty price for it.

I feel useless. A waste. Like my focus has been off the entire time. I can’t find the words to fill the silence. Nothing appropriate, anyway. “I’ve heard nothing.”

“Listen harder,” he says, a snarl embedded in his voice. “They’re not doing this for no reason. If you care so much about our success, you’ll find it.”

Their success is my success. I can’t help it. I’m completely self-serving there. But I care about children dying needlessly. I care about anybody dying needlessly. Jeanine may have beaten reactions out of me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things on the inside. And right now it’s taking everything in me not to break down sobbing. Inside I’m lost and wandering, having no idea where to go. Outside I’m firm and stoic, the rock for a cliff that’s crumbling.

I hand him the piece of paper, not knowing what else to do. I was never good with grief. He pauses a moment before grabbing it and stuffing it in his pocket. Despite everything, we have a mission. But the mission will fail if Dauntless kills all of my allies before we can even fire off the first shot.

“I’ll get you answers,” I say. I hesitate, waffling between wanting to offer support and not, not sure whether it’s appropriate or not. I err on the side of supportive. “Is there anything . . . Can I get . . .” And stuttering.

“Answers,” he says. “Get us answers. And preferably someone’s head.”

I watch him blink, the whites of his eyes momentarily blinking out in the darkness before catching the moonlight again. Without another word he crunches over the debris, his back to me, and walks away.

I’m left in the dark, in a morning that could still double as a late night, wondering just what the hell I’m in the middle of. As if it wasn’t bad enough trying to run a coup on a coup. Being a mole in a hawk’s nest. Now the signs I’m seeing from within Dauntless are pointing to something far, far worse. Are the faction’s own deaths related to the deadly raid on the Factionless? Only one way for me to find out.

With a turn I’m facing back the way I came and running back toward my Dauntless home, the cold stinging tears into my eyes. I don’t bother to wipe them away. Right now the world looks better blurry and I have to focus on my steps, on where I’m going so I don’t run into anything. It takes my mind off of . . . that. Let it process. Let it simmer. I’ll get Emmanuel a head. I have to.


	11. 11

I force myself to watch once of my girls get brutally beaten by a far larger, far stronger, Candor initiate. Christina’s so small, and she’s worked so hard, but she’s no match for the girl she’s up against. Nearly six inches taller, a good thirty pounds heavier. Christina didn’t stand a chance.

I want to run into the ring and slam the larger girl into the ground. The one who’s hovered toward the top of the rankings since the beginning. She’s such a perfect Dauntless. Doesn’t think. Just acts. Just does with precise and steadfast brutality. Out of the corner of my eye I see Eric smile, only briefly, before he stops the fight.

Immediately the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He who said everyone fights until they can’t fight anymore. He who wants people unconscious is allowing a give and giving Christina a pass? I don’t buy this for a second.

The hardest thing for me to do is to let things play out as they should. To not step in and stop a situation from getting so much worse. When Eric calls training for the day all shoulders in the room relax except mine. I clench my jaw and swallow hard and walk myself over to the weights. My day isn’t done. I need to burn off some steam.

I can feel Eric’s eyes on me, boring into my back. I peel off the shirt I’m wearing, stripping down to my sports bra and leggings. It’s easier to lift without so much fabric clinging to me. I know he watches as I grab a bar and load it up. His stare is distinct. It prickles my skin like no other. When I turn around, fastening a support to the bar, I quickly look up and catch him in the act. He holds my gaze for a second too long, taps the knife he’s holding against his hands, and then sheaths it in the holster on his leg before walking away.

The initiates mumble to themselves as they clean up and get dressed before heading out. The trainers, Eric included, mix themselves in with the crowd as everyone leaves. All except Four, who makes his way over to me as I clean more weight than I probably should. I have trouble jerking the bar over my head, but I manage to get under it, get it up, before dumping it at my feet. I’m drenched and I grab my shirt crumpled at my feet to wipe the sweat from my face.

“Training today wasn’t enough for you?” he asks as I unload some weight and refasten.

“I didn’t burn anything off and I wasn’t here early enough to get it in before we started.”

Never mind my run. That only added to my stress.

Four looks back over his shoulder and watches the last few straggling initiates as they walk through the door.

“None of them look nervous,” he says, almost whispers. I know exactly what he means. “Day’s over.”

I squat a few times, my eyes on the door, where they shouldn’t be, instead of focusing in front of me, instead of me paying attention to the enormous weight on my back. 

A scream tears through my clanging weights, my labored breathing, my grunts, and I bail the bar off my back and fall out of my squat. Four’s feet tap against the mats as he shuffles over to the rolling bar and taps a foot to it to keep it still. I grab at my shirt again and press it to my face. I press it so hard into my eyes I see spots in the darkness while that scream echoes in my ears.

“A day’s work is never over,” I mutter as I look up to see a water bottle in my face.

Four looks down at me, stares at me. It’s not the same look Eric gives me. He doesn’t have that same penetrating gaze. Four’s is different. Like he can see what I’m keeping back. Like he empathizes with it. But he says nothing when I take the water and he walks away.

**#**

I pass Eric in the Pit on my way back to my apartment and he grabs my arm to stop me. Nothing sudden or strong, but more than fingers gently brushing my sleeve. I feel him clench around my arm, enough to get my attention and to let me know I have nothing to worry about. Except I have everything to worry about.

His eyes catch mine and I stare him down. All sounds fades out around me and all I hear is that scream. What I found out was that it was Christina’s scream as he dangled her over the chasm. Punished her for giving in. They’ve been around long enough now. They all should have known better. Christina should have known better. At least that’s what I tell myself every time her scream echoes in my head.

But the look he gives me belies nothing about what he did. It’s not even a thought in his mind. Just something that happened at initiate training. Hardly worth his time. His gaze softens and when he gives me a little smile the corners of his eyes crinkle just a little, as if right now all he sees is me. As if I’m causing that smile.

Except I’m still an initiate myself and that smile could mean so many things. His tongue flicks out and he wets his lips and my core melts a little. Until Christina’s scream echoes again in my head. From the second I saw him I knew Eric would be my downfall, except now I no longer think it’ll be for the same reasons.

“You should come with us tonight,” he says as he slides his fingers from my arm. My flesh immediately goes cold and I want him to touch me again. The memory of Christina’s scream isn’t as loud this time around.

I have to remind myself the war I fight is so much larger than a single person. If I cave now, if I go to the defense of a single person, thousands more will fall. All the Divergents, all the Factionless, everything I’ve worked years for will be destroyed. Is one person worth that? I try to tell myself no, but it’s hard convincing.

“I should, huh? Should I bring a parachute or maybe some boxing gloves? How about a taser?” My own smile creeps onto my face, but my voice still has a sardonic edge to it. I can’t help it. One can only be jumped so many times before they develop a twitch.

He smirks and I swear he’s staring at my lips. “Don’t be so paranoid. All you’ll need is you. Maybe a heavier jacket. It’s been getting cold at night.”

Don’t I know it. Aside from my run early this morning I’ve been waking up to frost on my windows. And wherever I’ve been invited to, it’ll be outside. Great. I have to remember to pack gloves.

“And if I don’t want to?” I ask, just to play devil’s advocate. I’ll more than likely go. So far Eric hasn’t been wrong. They haven’t actually tried to kill me. Maim and bruise, sure. But not kill.  
He shrugs, the smile sliding from his face. “Then don’t.” He turns to walk away but his voice floats back over to me. “If you do meet us down here at eight.”

I watch him walk away, hands in his pockets, his shoulders squared, his back ramrod straight. He walks with an easy confidence, an authoritative air that forces people out of his way without him even saying anything. Crowds shift around him without even acknowledging him. His presence requires space and people around him instinctively know that.

It’s six now. I have some time. So I stop by mess and grab a plateful of food to go and bring it back to my apartment. I walk in to a dome of darkness. Stars twinkle on the other side of the glass and I stand and marvel at their brilliance for a moment before flicking on the light and flooding my world with brightness.

I inhale my food, starved after such a workout. At least Dauntless knows how to feed working soldiers. It’d be kind of dumb of them if they didn’t. My plate of protein and carbs fills me up quickly and I run a shower, eager to wash the day away.

As I stand under the shower head, steaming water running down my sore body, I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing. Is this all worth it? What am I getting into? Is there more than meets the eye? I came into Dauntless with one goal and all the answers I needed. Now I have a pile of goals and more questions than I can count.

Eric and Max. They would know about the Factionless raids. They’re too high up not to. They must know about the faction deaths too. Their own people. No way can they not.

I was alone in Erudite. For all my training for all those years I never had direct exposure to any of this. I had tunnel vision. One mission: destroy Jeanine’s Divergent holocaust. Destroy her control, Erudite, the factions. Bring it all down on its head. 

Now they’re killing Factionless children. Dauntless members are dying at record numbers. Initiates are being damn near tortured. What have I missed? This feels like more than just overtaking Abnegation and destroying nonconformists. I need more information.

Eric is the key.

What did they used to call spies who had sex with their targets? Honey pots? But they remained detached. Distanced. Lived only for the job. Easy when you don’t know the target. When you didn’t grow up with them. I can hide my emotions well, but I’m not a sociopath. I can’t turn my feelings off, and I don’t know if I can do that to Eric without ruining myself in the process. Even despite . . . Hell, I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t realize what he’s capable of. He nearly killed a girl today and thought nothing of it.

What else does he think nothing of? He thinks the world of Jeanine and her plan. But is that it? Does Eric feel? I refuse to believe he doesn’t. I just don’t know the extent. 

Little by little. I’m a warrior. I can blend in just fine right now. All I have to do is not announce my plans to the world. I’m not a spy. I can’t just fuck Eric for information. Besides, he’s far to smart for that and I’m not nearly skilled enough to pull it off.

What I can do is let him in. Stop holding back. Let what will be, be despite it all. It wouldn’t behoove me to keep him at arms length. I’m just afraid if I let him too far in, I won’t be able to get him out again.

I step out of the shower, dry my hair, and dress warm. I’m going out tonight.


	12. 12

I watch him attempt to hide a smile as he sees me walk up to his little group in the Pit, but he does a poor job of it. Or maybe he’s not trying to hide it at all. Maybe he was expecting me not to show up and didn’t know how to react. But now, as I walk closer, a little smirk remains. Something that quirks up the corner of his mouth, puts a glint in his eye. I’m not sure of that look. I don’t know what it means and I’m not sure I want to know.

“Look who decided to join us,” Eric announces as I move to stand next to him.

I shrug. “Eh. Didn’t have anything else to do.”

Kai steps up to me, her eyebrow raised. I’m not surprised to see her here. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t hoping she wouldn’t be. I can’t get everything, I guess.

“Deign to grace us with your presence? I feel so _special_.” A couple women standing behind her snicker and sneer. I’ve never seen them before, meaning they’re not in the inner circle. Looks like this ring of friendship extends beyond Jeanine’s reach.

“You know, fuck off, Kai. I just came to blow off some steam. You’re the one that keeps this shit going. Chill the fuck out.” 

I can’t help myself. I don’t get Kai. I don’t think I want to. But I’m sick of her needling. Whatever her damage she needs to get over it. Neither of us are going anywhere. We don’t have to hold hands and skip across the compound, but I’d rather not have a pissing match with someone just to see who can write their name in the snow the clearest.

“Don’t mind her,” another woman says as she sidles up next to me. It takes me a minute to place her, but then I realize her hair isn’t pulled back taut. A lot of her harsh make-up is gone, and she’s in more casual clothes than I am. Bennie. “Just get some liquor in her and she’ll be fine.”

“Oh like you know,” Kai shoots back at her, but she says it with a smile, one that reaches her eyes. Her gaze skates across me for a second before she and her friends walk away toward the exit.

A few men join us too. I recognize Jesse and he gives me a short nod before scooting along after Kai and her friends. Not surprisingly, no Crunch. No Four either. That doesn’t surprise me. Four doesn’t seem like the type to play all that well with others. Not that Eric is all hugs and love. But it’s about the game. And Eric’s all about that. And so am I, if I enjoy living.

Bennie bumps my shoulder as she follows the crowd out of the Pit, but turns to me first. “Relax. It’ll be fun.”

She smiles at me and I watch her lips pull taut under the silver loop in her bottom lip. I can’t help but smile back and I blaze hot on the inside when Eric presses his hand into the small of my back, urging me along. A longing shoots deep down into my core and I take a deep breath. I need to let Eric in, but baby steps. Not slamming him down on the floor of the Pit and giving everyone a show. I have no idea if he’d even be into that.

“Listen to Bennie,” he says, his voice wafting down to me from his height, but it’s like he speaks directly into my ear and I shiver. “Relax. It’s not all fights to the death.”

His fingers briefly wrap around my hip, give me a little squeeze and I can’t help but let out a low chuckle. His hand moves to my shoulder to give me a playful squeeze before letting go to join the others. I let him think I’m laughing at his words, but I’m laughing at myself. At what he does to me, whether I like it or not. And what he can’t possibly know: every day for me is a fight to the death. 

We hop on the train as it comes barreling by, a cluster of shadows jumping into the light. I grip lightly onto a pole in the middle of the car as we clack over the tracks. Someone calls my name and a flash of silver catches my eye. My hands shoot out and I catch a flash with what’s no doubt liquid courage sloshing around inside. I look up to see heads nodding at me, encouraging me. Right now I’ll bow to peer pressure. I unscrew the cap and take a hearty swig.

Straight grain burns a trail down my throat and it takes everything in me not to start hacking. Ugh. Sometimes I’d rather lick the sidewalk. Less destructive to my insides. I look back up, trying to find someone else to pass to, and one of the crowd points behind me. I look to see Eric with his hand out, waiting. I toss him the flask and he catches it with ease, looking at me while he swigs back the alcohol.

“So where are we going?” I ask no one in particular but I’m looking at Eric.

“The Dunes,” he says with a little smile but doesn’t offer any additional information.

I’ve been out that way once or twice. The Dunes are the wastes of the lakes that used to border the eastern edge of the city. Now it’s just our wall and mounds of sand. There’s nothing out there. Not even the Factionless make there way out that far. Can’t live on sand. But we’re going to play in it.

I find myself dazing, staring out the open door without seeing the city that passes by, when I feel a shadow hover over me. I look up to find Eric with a hand on the pole as we jerk around a bend, looking to the group of people a little deeper in the car.

“Jeanine wants to see us,” he says, voice loud enough that I can hear but low enough that it gets lost in the noise of the train before it carries away from us. “She wants an update and wants to see one of our extractions. She wants you there for it too.”

I have no idea what an extraction is and I’m kind of afraid to find out. But then I wonder if it’s something to do with Divergents. Extracting them from the faction? Oh god. Does that have to do with all the deaths? I hold back a shiver, play it off like it’s just from the cold fall wind rushing through the door.

“And she didn’t tell me this directly because?” I’m not going to lie. I’m irked that she didn’t come to me. I’m supposed to be one of her closest, yet I find out through Eric that she wants to meet with me?

“I was at Erudite this morning. She had me relay the message. Efficiency and all of that.”

I could nearly believe it. If Eric was there for something unrelated, and she was planning on calling on me today anyway, she’d kill two birds with one stone. Hell, she’d kill a flock with buck shot.

I nod and he yells over my head, “Stop’s coming up!”

He walks away without looking back, and I watch the rest of my fellow Dauntless gear up at the doors to jump out. Dead grass catches us on a little knoll, and an incline that lets us roll to graceful stops and get up without too much trouble.

What looms ahead of us are the rotted teeth of old Chicago. Waterfront buildings left to the elements, broken and beaten by wind and rain, frozen by ice and snow, and pounded by the water that was once here so many years ago, but now leaves nothing but piles of sand in its wake. 

We walk up an incline and through an opening in one of the buildings. A metal-walled warehouse more rust than not, creaking lightly in the wind. Our foot stomps echo in the empty space as pieces of paper flutter around our feet. Brine still hangs heavy in the air despite the salt water being long gone. It must have seeped into the walls, into the very frames of the harbor gatekeepers. The last reminder of a world that once was.

The clear night opens up in front of us as we walk out onto what’s left of the wharf. Our boots fall heavy on the old wood, creaks and groans following us toward the Dunes. One of the sand mound sits high against the shattered dock, the pilings sticking out like dead fingers. It’s where we go and we slide-step down the dune face, careful not to inhale too much sand.

At the top of the dune, before I take my first step into the night, I see the flames licking back the darkness. A bonfire sits nestled in a fire pit, a couple of people already warming themselves on the heat. Around the flames are pieces of drift wood and smoother stones. Hard seating for hard bodies. In the not so distance, maybe a half mile away, sits the fence. The one our people built to keep out the rest of the world. Hopefully what’s on the other side can’t see our light.

Without even a blink someone hands me a flask as I approach the flames and beckons me to take a seat. I don’t know his name but I smile back and accept, grateful for the welcome. Liquor burns as it slides down my throat and I revel in the scorch. I’d like to go at least a little numb tonight. Nothing serious. 

To my surprise Eric sits down next to me, but he doesn’t look at me. His smile comes off as easy, but there’s a tenseness just under the surface. Something that’s pulling a string and it’s pulled a little too tight. I move my eyes away from him and look around the fire. 

Kai sits clean on the other side of the flames. Away from me. I’m okay with that. But everyone else is laid back, easy with each other. They have conversations I’m not a part of, picking up from things said earlier. Talking about events that happened when I was still in Erudite. A bottle ends up in front of my face and I drink it without thinking. As the liquor slides down my throat I know I should have been more weary. But when I drop it and hand it over to Eric he takes a swig from the same bottle and any apprehension I had is instantly relieved. Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all.

“So,” Eric says and I turn my head toward him. That same mechanical smile is plastered to his face. Like it’d been glued there and he couldn’t drop it if he tried. “How are you liking Dauntless?”

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. Eric doesn’t do small talk. Short of asking about the weather, this is as small talk as it can get.

“It’s fine,” I say, sitting a little straighter, leaning back a little farther, better able to get more people in my peripheral. 

“Is it?” he asks with a little twitch to his lip, something inching closer to a sneer. 

Everyone’s stopped talking, but I keep my eyes on Eric, no matter how much the silence draws my attention. His eyes are hard, that weird smile nearly gone. I can’t tell whether this is the real Eric or the show Eric. The longer I’m around him, the more I watch him in training, the more I’m convinced there are two. But the show Eric, the one who wears a ruthless, cold-hearted face, is terrifying, and he’s sitting right in front of me.

His chin twitches just the slightest as he holds my gaze. “Let’s find out what you really think.”

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a syringe.


	13. 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I just have a ton going on right now and I'm finding it hard to keep up. I'm moving this coming week so there may be a delay in posting due to internet. I've never had a smooth experience activating internet at a new place so fingers crossed it goes smoothly and I can actually post on time. Otherwise I'll get it up ASAP.
> 
> You all may hate me until then, though, because I'm about to tease the crap out of you with this chapter. :) I'm evil like that. I do it for the comments because I love reading what you all have to say about what I write. It keeps me going. It really does. So thank you!

The needle itself is a good four inches long and the serum sloshes back and forth in its capsule. Of course this wasn’t just an easy night out. Why would I ever think that? This is another test. One in front of a bigger mix of people. Not just the inner circle, but a couple of those in regular leadership, and some not even that. Fuck.

Still, I allow myself to sag. Yet another test, and one I know I can get through. Candor’s truth serum. Welcome to my Sundays. Every Sunday for the last eight years I had to suffer through this shit. And it never got easier. I just knew what was coming. At least I know I won’t divulge anything unless I want to speak it. I didn’t suffer through eight years of this torture to not be able to beat that rancid stuff. But that doesn’t mean my fellow Dauntless won’t see me cry. That may very well happen.

I put on a little of my swagger and smirk back at the stone statue in front of me. “Truth serum? Is that the best you got?”

“Cut the shit, Bo. Not even you can suffer through that shit,” Kai says from the other side of the fire.

Wind whips around our circle and I blink back some smoke. She has no idea. Or refuses to have any idea. I don’t know how many times I can prove her wrong before she stops running her mouth.

“You ready?” Eric says.

I hate this look on him. Like his time in Dauntless has robbed him of everything human. A good soldier needs to compartmentalize, but this is something else entirely. I think back on what he’s said to me. How he’s acted around me and I can’t help but wonder if it’s all an act. Or if what I’m seeing now is the charade.

“Let’s get this over with,” I say, making sure to inject boredom into my tone. Not that difficult, although my stomach’s cramping just thinking about having to suffer through the serum.

I lean forward and Eric places his hand on my neck, his fingers resting against my flesh. Heat against heat. His thumb brushes my chin, drags along my jawbone and for just a second I see something flicker in his eyes. I see the stone melt away before it’s immediately replaced. I flinch as the needle enters my neck none too gently, his fingers clamping down on me as it slides in.

I feel the serum slide into my veins and the needle slide out of my flesh. Eric’s hand stays on me for an extra moment before it slides away, leaving a flash of heat before the cold fall wind comes and chases it away. I lean back and settle against the log I was leaning against, waiting for the serum to kick in. It’s something that settles into you like a weight, pressing down on your very soul as it burrows in, finding all the little tidbits about yourself, readying to fling them to the surface.

“How do you feel about the Factionless?” Eric’s voice is stern, his booming bass thundering clean through me.

The serum hooks in and swirls within me. It has my truth and it’s ready to burrow out of me to get the information out. But I block it. Already sweat prickles my forehead and I grind my fingers into my knees.

“They’re a blight,” I say through clenched teeth. “A pestilence that needs to be eradicated before they cause any more harm to our society’s way of life.”

“She’s lying,” Kai says through the ringing in my ears. “Look at her. She’s sweating. It’s trying to push the truth out of her.”

“Am I lying?” I say as the serum twists my tendons like rope, trying to squeeze my traitorous words out of me. “Or am I telling the truth, just not in the way the serum wants me to say it? It’s not real particular about things like that.”

That’s a truth and it gets me a small reprieve from its clutches. The purpose of the Candor serum is to spout out the first thing that comes to mind. I could very well be telling the truth, but if I try to change my words around the serum will kick in. I hate this stuff.

“Is Dauntless the best faction?” someone asks, but I didn’t catch who.

What a lame question. “The clothes are certainly more comfortable.”

Another truth. The noose lightens up a little more.

“Which do you like better?” that same voice asks. A little more specific.

“Dauntless,” I respond and the pain lets go. No evasion, no mincing words. It’s the first thing that comes to mind and the serum finally lets up. At least for this moment.

I scan the crowd and I see their eyes light up. Not just at my answer, but at the possibility of questions. So many options, and for the next ten minutes they can wing them at me. Their own personal truth or dare machine, just without the daring.

“When was the last time you got laid?”

I glare across the flames and see Kai smirking. The hooks of the serum grind in and her smile grows as she sees me flinch. Bitch.

“Why? You want to break my spell?”

I smile despite the gagging pain crawling up my spine. Hoots and hollers roar over the fire, but Kai only fumes. Man, she’s so short-sighted. It is far too easy to wing her shit back at her.

It goes on like that for ten solid minutes of sheer torture. Not just the dumb ass questions they ask, which range from favorite sex position to my favorite food, but having to suffer my answers through that god-awful serum. And the entire time Eric’s silent. Not one question comes from him. That’s probably a good thing. If he asked me anything explicit I don’t know if I would have had the composure to not blurt out the truth. Luckily that doesn’t seem to be his thing. Most of these people don’t seem to be his type. Too loud and showy. Eric’s far more quiet and calculating for this group, and I’m almost thankful for it. At least in this moment.

I wipe a sleeve across my forehead and it comes away soaked. Thankfully I didn’t cry this time. I was close. Not going to lie about that, but I never would have heard the end of it if I had. I can feel the serum dissipating. The hooks become less painful, the lies easier to hide. Once everyone realizes I’m no longer torturing myself they lose interest and I drop my head to my hands.

Right now there’s no way I can stay sitting. The fire’s too hot and the heat’s making me see spots. So I stand up and walk away from the flames. I embrace the chill wind as it wraps itself around me and shiver when the sweat on my face cools. My gut’s in knots and tomorrow I’m going to feel like I did the hardest workout of my life. But at least right now I can walk and the fall night is helping to clear my head. I guess that’s another test down. What haven’t I done yet? The fear landscape? That should be fun.

I walk to the metal staircase leading up the to fence and take the stairs two at a time. It looks like this section is sparsely patrolled. If I squint hard enough I think I see someone standing up toward the top, gun in hand, maybe a half mile around the bend of the fence. But it could just be a trick of my eye. I’m still seeing spots and all.

Metal clangs and I’m close enough to the staircase to feel the vibrations in the cement under my feet. When I turn Eric’s cresting the landing and walking toward me. I look back toward the fire and see the group clearly. Unfortunately for them the flames ruin their night vision. They couldn’t see either of us without walking away from the pit. I’m not sure if that thrills me or terrifies me. Eric’s face when he injected me with the serum pops into my head and I suppress another shiver.

“Not your first time, I take it?” he asks as he moves to stand right next to me. Even through our jackets I feel the heat pulsing off his body. Or maybe that’s just the flush creeping up my neck.

“Not even close,” I say, looking out past the fence, to the nothing beyond. “Who’s idea was that?”

“Mine.”

“Yours?” I say as I turn back toward him and see him leaning against a nearby railing watching me. “I figured you for putting me through a fear landscape. Something a little more mental than just suffering through pain.”

He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes and I’m not inclined to smile back. “Don’t worry. I won’t disappoint.”

No, he won’t. Now if I could just get a read on him. It’s driving me nuts that I can’t figure him out.

“How am I faring?” I say, waving my hand. “On your scale of disappointment. Am I meeting your disappointed expectations? Or maybe I’m not as disappointing as you originally thought.”

This time when he smiles it crinkles the side of his eyes and I can see his straight teeth in the moonlight, lit up under the blue light. “I never thought you for being melodramatic.”

“You’re sorely inexperienced in melodrama if that’s what you think this is. I mean, I could be sobbing uncontrollably right now, tears all down my cheeks.”

“Somehow that doesn’t fit you.”

“No? Then how about fainting?” I put my hand to my forehead, spin around and lean back so I’m looking at him upside down. “I do declare these ministrations to draw every last breath from me.”

Maybe it’s the alcohol flowing through my veins, what’s left after the adrenaline dump from the truth serum. But in this moment I can’t take anything seriously. And as I stand here watching Eric laugh at my ridiculous accent I can’t help but smile bigger. Until the bar I’m holding snaps from its welding and I drop.

I have enough time to mutter ‘shit’ before I come to a quick stop, finding myself wrapped in the strong warmth of Eric’s arms, looking up at the network of metal climbing over my head.

His lips brush against my ear, his breath hot, caressing my skin, as he whispers, “Like I said. Melodramatic.”

He chuckles and pulls me up against him, turning my world right side up again, but he doesn’t release his arms and I don’t move to pull away.

“You planned that, didn’t you?” I can hear the smile in his voice.

“You got me. I came out here earlier and sawed away at that bar, just so I could end up right here. You played into my trap nicely,” I say as I turn my head and try not to startle at his closeness. My nose brushes his cheek as he leans into me. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

“Or,” he says, and the corner of his mouth curls up in a little smile and his jaw tenses just slightly, “I saw it all coming and went along with it, making you think you’re smarter.”

His arms tighten just slightly around my waist and I can barely hide my smile. “You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

He turns his head then and our noses nearly touch. We’re breathing the same air between us. His eyes flit between mine and I try to keep up but then his gaze starts roving, along my cheeks, my forehead, my lips. Back up to my eyes. Like he’s soaking me in.

“You never gave me the time of day when we were younger,” he says, his voice barely louder than the wind.

The barking laugh that jolts out of my throat echoes over the dunes. I would have been mortified if what he’d said hadn’t been so ridiculous. “You were surrounded by girls. I’m sure you got enough time from them. What did you need me for?”

A small smile plays on his lips. If he’s offended by my laughing at him he doesn’t show it. His eyes are alive, sparking from the inside. This isn’t his dead look, his statue-cold stare from before. That was a mask. This, this is him.

He doesn’t answer, just lets the thought hang in the air, and in that moment I study him. In his smile I see the boy I knew, the one who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. In the man who holds me I see steel and ice, with the boy buried deep underneath it. It makes me sad, until I think of myself. I used to not have any cares either.

Still, I can’t help but say, “You’ve changed.”

I move my hand up and gently touch the couple of black blocks on his neck that stick up from his zippered collar. He tenses, his arms around me tightening at my touch, but I don’t know what he’s reacting to. My thumb and fingers glance along his tattoo, brushing down his skin until they hit the collar. I cradle his neck with that hand and bring the other up to touch the barbell in his eyebrow, run my thumb along the punctured flesh, long healed over. He holds my gaze as I touch him, the heat between us blocking out the fall chill.

“I’ve adapted,” he murmurs, his voice husky, low.

His hand moves from around my back, along my waist, leaving trails of fire behind. A whoosh of feeling drops into my stomach, settling far lower, and now it’s my turn to hold his gaze, to stiffen under his touch as his fingers graze up my ribs, just barely brushing the side of my breast under layers of clothing, before he settles his palm on my shoulder. Just over my scar. The bullet hole I showed at dinner the other night.

“So have you.”

I barely hear his voice as the space between us closes. Eric’s hand slides across my collar bone and settles on my neck, his thumb across my throat, rubbing under my jaw bone, my chin. My nails bite into his neck, my own thumb pressing into his throat and I hear his breathing pick up. His chest heaves and I fist the back of his jacket as he pulls me tighter into him.

He rubs my throat and it’s all I can do not to moan. I run my nails through his hair at the back of his head and his breath hitches. He pulls me tighter and I feel him, even though our layers, his hardening length as it presses against my stomach. I continue to hold his gaze as he lowers his head, brings our lips closer.

“Hey, assholes!”

Both of us stiffen and it has nothing to do with our closeness.

“We’re heading out! Let’s go!”

I can’t tell who yelled it, but I will hunt them down and staple their tongue to their forehead. We stay suspended for a minute, holding onto each other. Gripping each other. Breathing each other in. As if on cue our hands fall away from each other and the space between us grows, filling with the cold around us. Except the heat in me still throbs.

We stand apart, looking at each other. I see the hunger in his eyes, his need. Surely I must have it written all over my face too. Then I remember Jeanine. Her silent warning when they first picked me up from Erudite. Our upcoming meeting. If she smells anything between us she’ll crush it without a second thought. Eric must think the same thing because he clears his throat and straightens his jacket.

I turn around and hear more shuffling behind me. Fixing his pants, no doubt. I make my way down the stairs and across the field without looking back. The fire at our site is little more than smoldering embers. I miss the heat. Eric’s heat.

He’s only a few paces behind me and we make it back to the platform with only a few seconds to spare. We fall back in line, back into ourselves. Drunk smiles for everyone around us, lulls in laughs as the night comes to an end.

When we disembark everyone goes their separate ways, except Eric and I. We live right next to each other. We go to the same place. It’s quiet as we climb the stairs, open the door, and walk down the hall. I approach my door with the key ready. Eric walks a few paces and then stops.

I stare at his back and watch him slowly turn around. I see the war on his face, the emotions duking it out as he looks at me. Heat flushes my neck, my face. I need to compose myself for Jeanine. I want Eric to slam me against the door and fuck my brains out.

“Goodnight, Bo,” he says.

_touchmekissmefuckme_

He nods once, something that looks painful for him to do at the moment, and turns around to walk back to his place.

“Goodnight, Eric,” I say to his back and just as he turns the corner I catch the smile pulling up his lips before he’s out of sight.

I still feel him pressed up against me. His want for me. His hand on my neck, his caressing touch. The lock clicks in my door and I walk into my empty apartment, alone. A lone light in the corner guides me to my empty bed and I sigh thinking about how I’m going to have to take care of myself tonight. Then I think of Eric, his strong hands around his shaft, doing the exact same thing. My pants are off before I make it to my bed and I fall back onto it with a smile on my face and my eyes closed.


	14. 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! I moved last week so my computer was all packed and I wasn't able to do anything on it. I've finally gotten myself situated enough that I can start getting back into the groove of things. So I'm making up for last week now and you'll still get another chapter on Friday. Enjoy!

My hair is braided up on top of my head, out of the way. I’ve had trouble sleeping lately, and last night was no different. Just for different reasons. Our meeting with Jeanine is this morning. If I can’t shake this shit, Jeanine will shake it out of me and that’s not something I want to contend with.

Instead of command I make my way to Max’s office down in the bowels of Dauntless. It sounds worse than it is and besides. Max likes his cave-like atmosphere. He spends a good amount of time down here. I don’t pretend to know why. I don’t actually want to know why, although I have a feeling I’m about to find out.

When I enter Eric’s already there, but Jeanine thankfully, is not. It would have looked incredibly bad if I showed up after her and I’m sure she would have held that over my head until the day I died.

Instead I just have to face Eric. And he has his mask on. A look of cold indifference is settled on his face and his eyes narrow when I look at him. The depth to his compartmentalization is nearly terrifying, or he’s one hell of an actor. Either way I shift my eyes away from him and look to Max, who’s rifling through a stack of papers.

Max briefly looks up at me before looking back down. “Did Eric tell you what we’re doing?”

My eyes flutter, but I keep them off of Eric as he stands tall behind Max, his hands clasped behind his back. “It’s an extraction. I assume we’re pulling information from someone.”

Max nods, his eyes still down. “In this case two someones. A transfer from a couple years ago and a member of the Factionless. Kill two birds with one stone.”

When he looks up he smiles and he actually means to to be light-hearted. We’re about to torture someone and Max is making a joke. I catch Eric smirking behind him and my gut churns. We’ve adapted, he said last night. That means two different things for us. I’m training and torture to myself. I never had the opportunity to really fight anyone. Attack, torture. It was all done to me. Eric . . . He’s done it to others. Because he had to? Wanted to? I don’t know the answer. 

Max sees I don’t smile and his own smile drops and he stands up. “You’ve never done anything like this before.”

It’s a statement. Matter of fact.

I clear my throat. “No. I’ve never had any practical application of my skills until now.”

“Well, got to start somewhere,” he says, and that smile is back.

I look back to Eric then, and he’s staring at me, that same smirk on his face, but it’s slipped into a sneer. His eyes don’t linger long, but I feel them rake across me, searing trails across my flesh. I hold back a shiver and I question my very sanity. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m about to see the monster Eric’s really adapted into. And just what am I going to do? Be a passive observer? I doubt it. My stomach churns again and I swallow hard.

The seal on the door breaks and I look up to see Jeanine walking into the room, leaving behind a detail of guards in the hallway. She wouldn’t feel so threatened if she weren’t such a psychotic bitch, but those are details. The corner of her mouth is quirked up into what could pass for a smile, but it doesn’t come anywhere near her eyes. Unlike me and Eric, this isn’t a trained look. It’s Jeanine’s look. One she was born with. Not one she had beaten out of her.

“Madeline,” she says, her voice like trilling birds. She’s feminine in a way a sword is feminine, sleek and beautiful and fourteen different ways of deadly. “You look well. It appears your training wasn’t for naught.”

I smile my own fake smile that feels more like a sneer as I answer, “No, it certainly wasn’t. Everyone’s been keeping me on my toes.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want you to get rusty.” She turns away from me then, her eyes skating over Eric and landing on Max. “Are we ready?”

“Of course,” he says and he puts out a hand to show Jeanine through a door behind him.

He holds it open for her as she walks through first. He follows, with me behind him and Eric bringing up the rear. Incredibly close, I might add. Closer than what he would need to be for anyone else. I smell his soap, that same soap from our car ride on my first day here. Like he’s reminding me, in his own subtle way, that he’s here. Because there’s no other way to do it. Then again maybe I’m making that up entirely.

We enter a narrow hallway lit by harsh, sterile light. The hallway’s lined with doors and we walk through one into a plain, nearly run down room. The ceiling tiles show water stains. There’s a small puddle in one corner. The light flickers and it smells damp. No, this room wouldn’t be made to be comfortable.

Especially not with the steel table in the middle and the wriggling, damaged Dauntless strapped to it. He’s not as young as the children going through initiation now, but he’s still younger than me. Twenty, maybe, but you’d never tell from the damage to his face. Caked blood, purpled bruises, a swollen eye. His clothes are shredded, speckled with holes and tears. Dirt and grime are thick under his nails and his skin is splotchy, from bruising or dirt, it’s hard to tell. 

My heart rate spikes and all of a sudden I’m flushed with heat. The tiny, dank room we’re in suddenly seems stifling and I want nothing more than to run out. Run away. I don’t think I can do this. I must do this. I must find out more. Sacrifice one to save many. But who am I to make that call? I’m no one. But I’m a fighter.

“This one’s good,” Eric says from behind me and he moves closer to Jeanine. “Already revealed a network of underground Divergents working from the testing center. We just need to push him that extra inch to find out who and where. He’s more stubborn than we thought.”

Max hands Jeanine a file and she rifles through it. “He has at least a dozen fears. Madeline, what do you suggest?”

My head is blazing hot and my ears are ringing and I can barely hear my secret leader, but I make out her words well enough. “What are his fears?”

She looks back down at the list and begins to read. “Heights, confined spaces, fire, his parents dying. They’re all very standard.”

It hits me then. The perfect thing to do and I nod them out of the room. I can’t let the victim know what’s about to be done to him. It takes all my strength to not have my knees buckle under me, but I manage.

When everyone’s out of the room I say, “Sensory deprivation with slow introduction of olfactory stimulation combined with a hallucinogenic drug and a low dose of the fear landscape serum. Combine his fears, but make his brain work against him first. Put him in sensory dep first for a few hours, then start pumping in the smell of smoke, fire. Just smells,” I say, making particular emphasis to Max and Eric. This isn’t physical. “Pump in a low grade neurotoxin to start the hallucinations. By then he won’t notice if you stick him with a needle and get the serum into him. But you need to keep him lucid enough to hear you. Otherwise you’re submerging him and you won’t be able to get him out.”

It vomits out automatically, like a switch flipped in my head and all the training I’ve done becomes a sentient being and releases itself. It makes me want to actually vomit.

"I like the way you think, Madeline," Jeanine says with one of her ice-coated smiles. That certainly doesn't make me feel any better. And I don't bother to correct her on my name. She wouldn't care what the Dauntless are calling me. I'm still Madeline to her. Always will be. "Eric," she says, looking to him. "Make sure that's initiated."

He nods and turns to walk away without another word. Such a dutiful soldier. He's been broken in well. It makes me wonder who did it. His parents? Jeanine herself? Or was it him? Did he dive head first into the Dauntless way of life and beat his sensibilities out of himself on his own? It makes me sad for him. And sad for me. What would I be if not for Jeanine?

Weaker.

"Now," she says as she flips through a dossier and walks toward another door. "This one's interesting. We captured him in the last raid, correct?"

"Yes. We made sure he knew we were serious before taking him in," Max says with a sly smile on his face.

I wonder if he's talking about the last Factionless raid. The one where people died. Was that the captive's family? My stomach flips over and I cross my hands over my chest and clear my throat. The bile creeping up is starting to sting.

"Now, Madeline, I want you to try and extract more information from him. I see he mentioned something about meetings, members of the Factionless getting intelligence, but nothing more than that. Get more."

Her face is stone as she looks at me, and remains unmoving when she opens the door to let herself in. This room isn't any better than the last, and neither is the person strapped to the table. In fact, considering the amount of blood on the floor he's far, far worse.

He's in a mix of Candor white and Erudite blue, leavings from the factions left in dumpsters around the safe zone, scavenged by the Factionless themselves or collected and delivered by the Abnegation. Open lesions litter his arms and cuts slash across his face. He's panting and sweat clings to his skin where there isn't any blood. On a tray next to him sits bloodied instruments, some crusted and old, but others fresh and still glistening.

My heart thuds in my chest and I can't take my eyes off this man. I don't know him, thankfully. But that doesn't mean we don't have known people in common. I want to know him. I want to help him. But I can't. I'm just as trapped as he is.

"Today, Madeline," Jeanine says, impatience evident in her words.

I blink and realize I've been staring. For too long. I nod and the opening door draws my attention away from the bloodied heap in front of me. Eric walks back into the room and stands at the foot of the table, his hands clasped in front of him. I catch his eye and he gives me a nearly impercetible nod. Something I'm sure is supposed to be reassuring, but he's encouraging me to torture.

So I pick up a needle and turn off my humanity. I work on the Factionless man for at least an hour, mostly shoving heavy-gauged needles under his nails. Slowly. Every once in a while he lets out a scream, mumbles something incomprehensible, and passes out. Whoever worked him over before we got there really did a number on him. He's closer to dead than he is alive and I feel my soul slipping further and further away from me.

Jeanine points to a syringe. I don't hear what she says is in it. I don't want to know. Only when I grab it I pull the plunger out just a little farther than where it was, letting in a small bubble of air. The man under my pain is not walking out of here alive. The least I can do is put him out of his misery. No one will know. No one's watching my slight of hand. I make sure of it. They just see me slide the needle into his skin and push the plunger down.

It takes only a second, but the man gives off one more gasp and then falls limp onto the table. As a show I flick around the needles still wedged under his nails and don't get a response. I mutter curses and stick two fingers to his neck.

"Damn," I say. "He's gone."

"Well," Jeanine says. "That was unproductive."

She says something else, something to Max, but I can't hear her over the ringing in my ears. I stare down at the dead man on the table, the one I killed. The one I tortured, and the image sears itself into my brain. I look up and find Eric staring at me, still in the same position he was in from when he walked in. No emotion shows on his face and I'm pretty sure none shows on mine, but inside I'm crumbling and I don't think I'll be able to hold myself up much longer.

Jeanine slaps the folder into Max's hands. "Find some more. Don't stop until you get something useful."

Without another word she exits the room. Her guard waits on the other side of the door and the cadre of footsteps echo in the hallway as they all walk away. “Madeline, a word,” she says, without pausing.

"You did good," Max says. "Didn't even falter. And on your first time, too."

He says that like it's a good thing. Like it's not the last time I'll have to do this.

"Thank you," I respond and scrabble to keep the shudder from my voice. "Jeanine trained me well."

"That she did," Eric says and I look at him and see the smirk quirking up his lips. I'm too dead on the inside to feel anything at that look.

"Go get cleaned up," Max says. "Make sure you're down in the training room by ten."

I nod and shuffle out of the room without another word, without looking at Max. Or Eric. I can't. I'm barely holding myself together. But I still have to go to Jeanine.

She stands farther down the hallway, her arms crossed over her chest, an impatient tap to her toe. Her head tilts to the side slightly and she watches me walk closer.

“How is everything progressing?” she asks as she releases her arms to her sides.

I swallow down my pain and give the best answer I can. “As planned. The initiates are ruthless. I doubt those ranked at the bottom will even survive to the end of training.”

A smile quicks up the corner of her lips and my stomach turns even more sour. “Excellent. The physical portion should be wrapping up soon, yes?” I nod. “Pay particular attention when they start in the fear landscapes. Anything out of the ordinary and I want to hear about it.” I nod again but don’t say anything. And neither does she as she turns and walks away.

I'm calm as I turn around and walk down the hallway. Back up into the Pit. To the stairwell. Then I take the stairs two at a time and sprint back to my apartment. I barely make it to the bathroom before I start vomiting.


	15. 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is where the story rating may change . . .

The day flies by in a blur, my stomach cramping along the way. So to hide it I work the girls to death. I run them until they can barely move. I run them again until they’re puking on the side of the road and then run some more. I make them lift until their arms are jelly. Squat until they can’t feel their knees. Punch until their knuckles are bloody.

But it’s not enough to erase the morning. What’s happening to the Dauntless man because of my torture recommendation. How I killed the Factionless man to put him out of his misery. To get him away from Jeanine.

At least I know something. Dauntless are getting intelligence too. I don’t know from where, or if it’s all through torture. But they’re getting it and they’re trying to upset the Factionless uprising. They’re trying to break them.

As for their own . . . That’s about Divergents. Me. As I walk among them. Train their initiates. Drink their booze. Sleep in their quarters. They’re skinning their own to try and find out where we all are. I throw a fist at the punching bag and feel the flesh on my knuckle give. It’s had enough and the skin’s finally split. A trail of blood smears down the bag and I don’t bother to wipe it away.

“I want to fight Bo,” I hear a voice say and I turn around.

It’s the cocky motherfucker in the ring. One of Eric’s favorites. Peter, I think his name is. He’s muscled up over the weeks, his tall frame finally getting some bulk. And he stands up there waving me on.

“C’mon,” he goads. “Let’s see what you really got.”

He’s got to be kidding. He’s seen me and Eric fight. Eric’s twice his size and we ended up even. This kid’s got a death wish if he wants to fight me. Especially today of all days.

I frown. “Are you serious?”

“Humor him,” I hear Eric say. “He think he can take you.”

I see the glint in Eric’s eyes and I know what he’s doing. He knows I need to let off steam and for all the good being his favorite does, Peter needs to be taught a lesson in humility. Eric’s just giving me permission to humiliate.

Challenge accepted.

I nail my eyes to Peter’s face and keep them there. I untie my boots without even looking and step out of them. I shake off my jacket, leaving a trail of my stuff behind me. Peter backs away from the edge of the ring as I get closer, a smirk on his face, and I leap in.

But I don’t stop there. I raise my hand and he moves to block, but I lash out a kick and nail him in the stomach. He doubles over and doesn’t recover fast enough for my upper cut. Or my knee. I kick his legs out from under him and knock him onto his back. He gets in one good kick to my ribs and I know that’s going to bruise. But that’s all the luck he has.

He’s taller than me by maybe five inches. Has about sixty pounds on me, but I’m a machine with my punches. All the blood under me. I see it on the hands of the Dauntless strapped to the table. Covering the Factionless as I kill him.

In a second a leg is across my chest and I’m on my back with Peter on top of me, bloodied face dripping over me as his hands wrap around my neck and squeeze. Black dots flash in front of my eyes but I take out his elbow before more of my vision goes. He crumples down on top of me and I lock him into a choke hold, using his weight against him. Six seconds it all it takes before he’s unconscious. I wait a beat and then roll him off me.

I don’t get any joy in beating on a kid. But his cocky ass needed a lesson and Eric knew it. I gave him that lesson. Now maybe he won’t think his shit doesn’t stink and I feel just a little bit better. Maybe not better. Just not so wound up. Bone-weary and exhausted would be the words.

I sit up and scoot over to Peter, who’s still out cold. With a hard slap across his cheek he startles awake and I toss him back on the ground.

“You have years before you even have a dream of beating me, Peter. Remember that next time.”

I get nothing but a sneer in return as he rolls over and pushes himself up and walks out of the ring. Blood splatters the mat underneath me, but I ignore it as I pull myself up and slowly walk back to my discarded clothes. No one says anything. No one tries to see if I’m okay. Instead I walk out of the training room and head to my apartment.

It takes forever to wash the blood off, and no matter how clean my skin looks there’s still gobs of blood to be scrubbed. It runs deep into my soul and no amount of hot water will wash it away. I wince as I touch my ribs, but bite through the pain as I make sure nothing’s broken. I don’t need the infirmary. Not this time. I don’t need anyone. I just want to watch the blood circle the drain.

Dinner is about as appealing as eating garbage so I skip it. Maybe I’ll grab something later. Maybe not. All I have right now is a bottle of vodka and I plan on nursing it for a little while. Only one light is on in my apartment: the small table lamp next to my bed. It’s otherwise dark, the night sky twinkling above me.

I layer on some shirts and a pair of pants and head out to the balcony and sit on one of the chairs, staring out into the graveyard of a city, the skeletons of its remains casting shadows against the sky. I don’t know how long I’m sitting there when I hear a knock at my door that I don’t bother to answer. When I hear the door knob click and the door creek open I curse myself for not locking it.

Whoever comes in shuts it behind them and their heavy footfalls echo out to me. The steps are slow, but not measured. Meaning this isn’t something stealthy. Whoever it is doesn’t mean to sneak up on me.

“Who’s that?” I call without looking over my shoulder.

“Just wanted to see how you were doing.” Eric.

His steps move a little faster when he realizes I’m on the balcony and he walks over to me, standing in the shadows just behind my chair. I can feel him hovering, as if the dark he casts carries weight and he settles it on me.

“I’m fine,” I say, because the last thing I want to do is talk about it.

“Right.” I hear the deadpan in his voice and I want to slap him. “I thought you were a professional.”

I bristle at the jab and it takes everything in me not to launch myself out of my seat and attack him. Maybe that’s what he’s expecting, but I don’t give it to him.

“Sorry. Coping with torturing and killing people wasn’t part of my training. Jeanine must have missed that.”

I hear a little snort and I think what might be a chuckle. Is he serious? “No, I don’t think she did.”

“I never used any live subjects, Eric. I watched footage. Read books. Did research. This . . . was never practical. I can make myself look dead on the inside. Doesn’t mean I am.”

He steps closer and the bottle slides out of my fingers. I stare at my empty hand for a second before I follow the bottle up to Eric. Watch him take a swig before placing it down on the table.

“You need to adapt, Madeline.” I flush at his use of my name. My real name, not my Dauntless moniker. “This is how we survive.”

I push myself out of the chair and blink as the world sways, but it only lasts a moment. His face is cast in shadow, but I can still make out the hard line of his jaw, the tilt of his eyes as he watched me, the push of his lips.

“Is this how you survived? You just . . . lock it away where you can’t reach it and move on?”

“My parents were a little more . . . practical than yours. They started me early.” Even in the dark I can see the smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Then I know we grew up very differently. My parents postured, politicked, and schmoozed. They didn’t get their hands dirty, but they taught me to manipulate, to scheme, to work my way around a room without leaving a trail. Eric’s parents . . . all the workings of Erudite and physically ruthless to boot.

“Didn’t you ever question? Ever fight back?” I was disgusted for him. I couldn’t hide it. I had no idea this was going on and I want to apologize to him for it. I should have done something even though there was nothing I could have done.

“Hesitation meant fists. Compassion meant pain. Leaving was never an option so I did what I had to do to avoid repercussions. I adapted. And I continue to adapt.”

He steps even closer to me and I wonder if he just revealed something there, something between the lines. He continues to adapt. Meaning he still fights compassion? That he still hesitates?

“You need to continue to adapt,” he says as he raises a hand to my face and draws his thumb down my jaw.

He rests his hands on my shoulder and spins me around to face out toward the city, the broken landscape in front of me. His left arm comes across my chest, my collarbone, and his hand rests gently on my neck, his fingers wrapping around my skin, warming me. His right hand slides down my side, wraps around my waist and settled on my stomach, just over the top of my pants.

At first I’m stiff, unsure what he’s going to do. Adapt and all of that. Then he lowers his lips to my ear and I feel his hot breath on my skin.

“That is what happens when the world doesn’t adapt. Everything gets destroyed. Everything dies. Our survival depends on what we do.”

“Do you really believe that?” I ask as I melt into him, settling my back against his chest and resting my hands on his legs. His arms wrap tighter around me and his fingers play at the top of my pants, tips of his fingers dipping just below the line, searing heat across my skin.

“I don’t have a choice,” he whispers, his voice throaty, low and rumbling. I can feel it in his chest and I fist his pant legs, leaning further into him.

“Our whole lives are nothing but choices,” I say as I tilt my chin up to him and his hand grips tighter onto my neck. A moan catches in my throat. “Even in our regimented world, we still have choices. No one can take that from us.”

He dips his head low and brushes his lips along my jaw, up my ear. Teeth nip at the lobe and my knees nearly buckle. I rest my head on his shoulder as he slides his fingers further down into my pants, his hand hindered by the buttons. I turn my head and our lips nearly brush. Even in the dark I find his eyes and hold his gaze. His voice is calm, but I feel his heart hammering a staccato beat. I hear him trying to hold back his pants.

“What’s your choice, Madeline?” He whispers into my mouth and I inhale his breath. “In this world, what’s your choice?”

Fingers grip onto my pants and pull, releasing the button from its hole. I don’t bother to hide my own panting, my own longing as he takes his agonizing time drawing down the zipper. I feel my longing dampen my thighs, soak my panties. The hand on my neck tightens and his thumb tilts my head up farther, the better to reach him. I lift my own hand up and grab hold of the fabric on his shoulder as he slides his hand back down my stomach and into my panties.

For a moment he does nothing more than cup my mound, his fingers barely gracing my opening, my lips closed to him. Until his fingers start to play and he starts to spread me open, rubbing a finger gently over my clit. Stars burst in front of my eyes and I squirm but he holds me strong.

Another finger plays at my opening, petting, circling, drawing out my want, soaking his hand. He’s practically holding me up now but I still hold his gaze as he pushes a finger into me, then another. My wetness lets them slide in easy and I can no longer hold in my moan. Nor can I hold myself back.

I pull him down to me and our lips crush together, all soft padding and teeth until we find our way in the dark to something softer, something more urgent, filled with need. Our tongues prod each others mouths while Eric’s fingers plunge into my pussy over and over again, my sex dripping onto his hand, which is not nearly enough.

Not even close.

I start to tilt into him, turn into him and slowly, oh so slowly, he pulls his hand away from me to let me turn around. I press into him and his hand finds me again, presses against my back, slides back down into my pants to grab my bare ass and pull me closer. I grab his jaw, dig my fingers into the bone, and he presses harder into my mouth, our tongues dancing at a fevered pace. His hand grazes my throat and clamps onto the back of my neck, anchoring me to him. I feel him again, his hardening length, and I rub myself up against him. My cunny dampens even more as he moans into my mouth.

In a heartbeat my hands are on his chest and I shove him away. He stumbles back and I revel in his stunned expression, his lips swollen from our kisses, his fingers still glistening from my juices, his arms forming a loose circle as if my body is still there.

“I choose to live, Eric,” I say as I give him a hooded look I know damn well he can see. The shadows can’t hide his cock pressing up against his pants and I stand there, partially exposed. My pants undone, panties exposed and half hanging off my hips. “I choose to live.”


	16. 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm moving even beyond Mature on this one. :) Enjoy!

Before Eric can say anything, before he can move out of his stunned stance, I’m closing the gap between us, holding his gaze as I approach. What I said, I mean every word, and it means so many things.

I fist his jacket in my hands and walk him backward into my apartment. He doesn’t put his hands on me, not then. Instead he stares into my eyes, a small smile that cracks his mouth open just a little bit plays on his lips. I walk him around to the couch and our feet move in tandem. Every step I take he takes with me and we never falter. We move as one.

But I throw him back alone and he crashes into the couch in a slouch, that smile still playing on his lips. The urge to ride him until we both explode is so high I can barely contain myself. But I do. I want to savor this.

I straddle his lap and lower myself on top of him, my clothes still hanging on, our chests sliding together. I’m getting hotter, my layers of shirts not helping, but I’ll make him peel all those off. I’m not doing any work for him right now and I let my own smile tick up my lips.

His hands slide up my ass to my waist and his fingers dig in. For a second it hurts, but then I grind into his lap to let him know he’s on the right track.

Eric lets out a small little laugh. “Can’t do much with your clothes on,” he whispers into my mouth as I dangle my lips over his.

“Oh Eric,” I breathe and nip his bottom lip. He quivers at my bite. “Have some patience. My pussy’s not going anywhere.”

I smile as I talk and flick my tongue over his lips at the end of my sentence and his hands dig into my ass as a moan rumbles in his throat.

“The only place it better go is sliding down my cock.” He breathes heavily when he speaks and I revel in him losing his breath over me.

“The only place?” I ask with a pout as I dance my fingers along a sliver of bare skin on his stomach. “Surely you have more imagination than that.”

He bares his teeth in a wider smile and I desperately hope I’ll be feeling those later. I grab the zipper on his jacket and slowly drag it down, revealing the shirt underneath.

“Get your hands off of me,” I growl as I unlatch the zipper and spread his jacket open.

I look up at him from under my lashes and I see him frown. He’s about to say something when I say, “Hands. Off. Now.”

He throws his hands up in surrender, his frown deepening. I can see the muscles in his face twitch, how he’s trying to understand what’s going on. Meanwhile I’m still smiling and so enjoying what I’m seeing.

“If your hands touch me,” I say in a playful voice, “I put on another piece of clothing.” His frown lightens up and I smile wider. “I can touch you, but you? No fingers, no lips,” I lean down to his ear, “And don’t even think about bucking your hips.”

Confusion still draws across his features, but now he’s intrigued. His eyes glitter in the light cast by the lamp, his pupils huge. I press myself down into his lap and feel his hardness between our clothes. He’s still engaged. Good. He lowers his hands down to the couch, palms down, and waits.

I slide his jacket over his shoulders, trying to pull him up, but he doesn’t move. Good boy. He listens well.

“Sit up,” I tell him in a throaty whisper and he does, pressing our chests together.

I rub my hips against his and I hear him breathe deeply. I lower myself over his face to I can drop his jacket down and slide his hands out, our lips touching, and him not making a move. I take his bottom lip in my teeth and suck on it for a second before letting it go. I pull the jacket from behind him and toss it away. When I press into is chest he leans back into the couch.

“What do you want to do to me, Eric? Tell me. What’s on the other side of these clothes?”

I half expect him to go machismo. It seems like that would play into the persona he projects. I try not to freeze when he speaks.

“I want to torture you.” His voice is a rumble and I falter with his t-shirt, leaving it only inches above his pants, not even close to off. When I look up to him I find him staring at me with such intensity a rush of cold waves through me. “Pay back every touch and lick and suck you’re doing to me right now.”

I smile as I pull his t-shirt higher. “You like revenge?”

His smile is nearly a sneer and I watch his deep inhale as I rake my nails along his stomach, up his well-developed chest.

“Love it,” he growls and I pull the shirt over his head and throw it off somewhere with the jacket.

Eric sits bare-chested underneath me. He’s taking deep, careful breaths, desperately trying to control himself under my touch. His neck tattoos stop at his collar bones and the ink on his forearms stop at his elbows. His body’s thick and muscular, well-honed over years of Dauntless training. 

“You like what you see?” he asks and I can’t help the heat flushing my cheeks.

I take a nipple in my fingers and pinch and he sucks in air, the muscles in his jaw twitching.

“I like your teeth,” I say as I slide my hands down his chest and grab hold of his pants. “You going to do anything with those?”

I pop the button on his pants.

“Bite your nipple as I suck it raw. Bite your pussy and lick the pain away.”

As if in answer my cunny pulses, calling to him. Needing him. Fuck, I’m torturing myself doing this. I lower the zipper on his pants. What do you know? He does wear underwear. The boxer brief kind.

“Who said I’d want the pain to go away?”

Eric tenses under me and I nearly laugh at his self-control. He really is a soldier, doing exactly what he’s told. Let’s see how he does when he’s let off the leash.

I leave his pants hanging open, now matching mine, and I lean back into him, my hands dragging along his chest, my nails raking through the hair. I move in to kiss him and watch as he readies his lips, but I pull away at the last moment.

“I want you to touch me now, Eric. Make me suffer.”

Something between a smile and a snarl crosses his face and he moves like lightning, his hand clamping around my neck and flipping me over, taking his place on the couch. He kicks my legs apart with his knees and settles between them, his hand still firmly on my neck.

For a second I feel like I should be afraid, that he could actually kill me at any second. But he never cuts off air. He squeezes and I squeeze my legs around him. He shoves his other hand down my pants and runs a finger along my slit before pulling it right back out. My juices shine on his finger and he looks at it for a moment before sticking it in his mouth and looking at me as he slowly pulls it back out.

“Just getting started,” he says as he presses just a little bit harder into my throat and I moan. He drags his thumb down my lip and I flick my tongue out to lick it. I’m squirming under his grasp as he stands up and releases his grip. 

He drops his pants and steps out of his boots and leaves himself standing in nothing but underwear. His thighs are all corded muscle, thick as tree trunks. Flat stomach. Hip bones carved into flesh. A trail of hair leading down into a place I desperately want to see. I move to sit up, reach for him, and he pushes me back down on the couch.

“This is going to be fun,” he says before he rips my shirts over my head in one fell swoop, leaving me in a bra and open pair of pants, my legs spread and waiting.

He gets to his knees and my pussy throbs just seeing him in that position. He lowers himself so his face is at my stomach and he grabs onto the back of my pants and slowly, agonizingly, pulls. Lips whisper on my skin, crawling lower the lower he pulls my pants. When he gets to my hip he takes a bite and I gasp, an erotic blend of pleasure and pain pulsing through my body. My pants slide down my legs and they’re gone, my skin cold before I press my legs against Eric’s body, warming myself up.

I watch his eyes and he watches me as he pulls himself up, dragging his body against mine as he reaches for the hooks on my bra. As if I were unlatching them myself the bra is undone and he’s sliding it down my arms and flinging it away, leaving me exposed.

A hand slides up my waist and a thumb glances my breast before finding my nipple. He flicks at it and it grows hard under his touch, the bud begging for more. And he doesn’t disappoint. I run my fingers through his hair as he pinches my nipple, delicate at first, but that doesn’t last. A growl low in my throat escapes and he smiles at me before he lowers his face to my breast.

At first it’s just his tongue running along the sensitive skin underneath, taking its time before getting to the sweet spot. He grabs my tit roughly and I wrap my legs around him, his free hand sliding under my ass to pull me closer. Quick, lapping flicks hit my nipple and I want to scream. Then he takes it between his teeth, gently biting down, and resumes his rapid flicking and it’s almost too much. I can feel the sensation building in my core and I buck into him, grabbing his hair and pressing him to me.

All of a sudden he stops. His mouth is gone and cold air brushes my wet nipple. His face is hovering over mine and his eyes are roving my face again. I reach up just an inch and he doesn’t pull back. I brush our lips together and he still doesn’t move. I pull him to me and he wraps his arms around me and our mouths dance with each other, tongues twisting and feeling and probing, hungry. Like this is our last meal.

He pulls away first and his breath is sweet on my face. “Don’t cum, Madeline.”

At first I don’t understand. “What do you mean?” I pant. My breath is permanently lost for as long as he’s here.

He lowers himself back down and runs his tongue along my other breast, gives the nipple just a little flick, before biting into the thick flesh and I gasp.

“Don’t cum,” he repeats.

My mind is foggy, lost in Eric’s haze, and all I can feel is his tongue as it trails down my stomach. His teeth as he nips into my skin. His face stops just at my underwear, pressing into my abdomen, breathing me in. Then his fingers bend into the waist of the fabric and pull down. My leg bends and pulls out of the hole and he grabs it, pressing his face to my skin while his hand trails down my other leg, lower and lower, to my exposed self. Waiting.

Lips trail feather-light kisses down my thigh, hover right at the crease. Eric bites into the thick flesh on my leg, so close to my pussy, and I cry out. Fuck it hurts but it feels so damn good. His thumb keeps grazing my opening as he rubs the crook of my leg and I silently beg him to use it. Stop torturing me, Eric. But I know he won’t, and I don’t really want him to. I want him to make me beg.

“I couldn’t touch,” he says as his eyes find mine over the heaving swell of my body. “Now you can’t cum. Don’t make me punish you.”

My pussy throbs at the words and he smiles, knowing what he’s just done.

“You can’t be serious,” I pant.

“Payback’s a bitch,” he says as he holds my gaze and runs his tongue along my slit.

I nearly explode. He props my heels on the edge of the couch so I’m spread wide, completely open to him. His tongue is a finely crafted machine as it flicks around my clit, swirls around my inner petals, and probs my opening. When he adds a finger to my slick hole, and then another, and flicks his tongue again on my clit, I try to send my brain somewhere else. I need a distraction to keep the orgasm away. I try to think of the other women he’s done this to, try to bring up some kind of jealousy, but it only leads me back to his mouth working my cunt and that doesn’t help.

Soon enough my body doesn’t care where my brain is and the fireworks build without me. Heat rushes out of my head and my breaths come in quick gasps. My world stops as the explosion mounts, my hips pressing into his face. As if he knows what’s coming he moves his tongue faster, goads my end on. In a rush I’m flooded with pleasure, my pussy pulsing against Eric’s mouth, mounting to a painful finish as he holds me strong and laps at me. I try to push his head away, each flick of his tongue sending a shock wave of sensation through me, but he keeps going. When the pulse of pleasure dies down, Eric comes up, my juices wet on his lips. When he’s close to my face I smell my sex on him and it burns me hotter.

Without thinking I grab his face and press my lips to his. I taste myself mixed with him and it drives me crazy. The way he grabs at me, lifting me off the couch, wrapping my legs around his waist, he must feel the same way. 

“You’ve done bad, Madeline. You disobeyed me.”

“I am rather insubordinate,” I whisper into his mouth. “Let me make it up to you.”

I drop my legs from around his waist and he lets me slide down so my feet are on the floor. I sit on the edge of the couch and I’m staring at his clothed crotch. The last piece of fabric left on his body.

I look up at him as I run my nails up his thighs and I watch him shiver. One of his hands pushes through my hair. “You can’t bribe your way out of your punishment.”

I smile then and his lips part just the slightest. “Who said I wanted to?”

I tuck my hands into his briefs, grabbing his taut ass and pushing the fabric down. A triangle of hair appears before his cock springs away from the underwear and Eric steps out of it when it drops to his ankles.

I’m so shocked by what I see my jaw drops and I look up at him with wide eyes. The smile that crawls across his face, the way his pupils dilate, makes my pussy wet all over again.

“Just you wait,” is all he says and I look back down.

It’s not the size that has me stunned. His dick’s a length and girth that will make my pussy very happy. What surprises me is the barbell in the head. Pierced from the bottom, right where the head meets the shaft, and coming out the hole. I can’t imagine how much that hurt to get and now I’m not surprised Eric likes pain if he suffered through this.

I wrap my hand around the shaft, the skin velvety, and massage the underside, rubbing along the vein. I run my tongue along the underside of the head, on either side of the stud, before flicking the stud itself, and he gasps and clenches onto my hair. Bingo.

Slowly I trail my eyes up his body and when my gaze lands on his face his eyes are closed. When he opens them he stares me down and I smile, my tongue resting on his cock, and I flick the stud again and watch him flinch. His teeth clench and I revel at the pull on my hair. I look down, close my eyes, and take him in.

I go shallow at first, not even dragging my lips halfway down his length, before I take him all in. I feel the stud at the back of my throat and I run my tongue along his cock, jerking my hand as I move. My tongue flicks the stud on the underside and this time I gasp at how hard he grabs my hair. I play at the head, running my tongue up and down the soft skin, lapping up the salty excitement that comes out.

With my other hand I reach for his balls and at first I just cup, letting their weight rest on my hand. Then I gently massage as my head bobs on him, my hand working the part my mouth can’t reach.

“Madeline. Fuck,” he whispers, barely choking out the words.

Both his hands are on my head, clutching my hair. I look up and see him watching me, his eyes as hard and intense as the cock in my mouth, and I can’t look away. When I move away from him, licking my tongue around the head while I stare him down, I watch his teeth clench, a sneer push its way to his face.

For a second I think I’ve hurt him, or done something wrong. Then I feel hands under my arms and I’m off my knees, back on Eric’s waist, my legs wrapping around him. One of his hands is back in my hair and he’s pulling me to him, his kiss ravenous, hungry. We devour each other, my nails digging into his neck, afraid to let go. I never want to let him go.

We move as one, Eric carrying me over to the bed. He breaks the kiss first and just stares at me, his thumb running along my cheek, across my lips. He dips his head and trails kisses down my neck, nips at my collar bone. He takes a nipple in his mouth and at first gently sucks before letting his teeth do some work.

I’m a mess of passion. I can’t see beyond him. His face in front of me, his cock pressing into me, his body between my legs. Never have I known anything like this. Never have I been so wet for a man on his knees and never have I so desperately wanted to get on my knees for a man. This is destruction.

Eric tosses me onto the bed and smiles down at me, but doesn’t make a move. I see him and he sees me. We’re both exposed and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just as I’m about to say something, Eric says in a throaty voice not usually his own, “Show me how you took care of yourself last night.”

I laugh. Big of him to assume. He’s right, of course, but I’m not going to give in to him that easily. Maybe.

“What makes you think I did?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up and his hand finds his cock and begins stroking. I watch his hand move up and down the length of his dick and my pussy grows moist. 

“I wasn’t the only one pissed off at the interruption. Would you have let me fuck you at the fence?”

His eyes are do dilated the blue’s practically gone and his cock is a solid length that I want in me. Now. Instead I take a breast in one hand and start playing with a nipple. My other hand wanders down my stomach and starts probing at my wet slit.

“Hard. Yes,” I pant as I insert one, then two, fingers, massaging my pussy just the way I like it. “Eric, please.”

He nearly snarls at my begging. “Is that what you thought of as you fucked yourself?”

He strokes himself harder as my fingering grows more furious, the orgasm beginning to mount. “No,” I gasp.

“Then what?” His voice is a breathy whisper I can barely hear over the blood pulsing in my ears.

“This,” I say. “You. Your cock in your hand.” I groan. “Fuck me already, Eric. C’mon.”

Then it dawns on me, in my orgasm-addled brain. This is his punishment. I want his cock and he’s not giving it to me. Fucker.

My eyes are almost all the way closed and I don’t see him reach down, but I feel his fingers around my wrist, pulling me away from myself. My eyes open all the way and he’s kneeling on the bed between my legs and I’m about to heave a sigh of relief when he says, “Up against the wall.”

I frown. “I don’t . . .”

“On your knees,” he growls, “with your hands on the wall.”

My pussy’s throbbing and I’m readying to throw him down and mount him, but he’s so close, crowding my space. I can’t help it. I want to see what he’s going to do. So instead I pull myself up, making sure to pull my body up against him, slide my tits along his chest, his lowered face. He bites at my hip as I pull it by and I gasp, making sure my pussy greets his face briefly before I assume the position.

Glass is cold under my palms as I lift myself up, my back to him, my knees spread wide. The bed dips underneath me and I feel his heat close to my body. Hands run up and down my back. Fingers find my nipples and pinch, Twerk. I moan and open my legs wider. Maybe . . .

Only instead of in, he slides his cock along my slit, rubbing along my opening, my clit. My juices wet him down, but he doesn’t enter me. I press back into him, my body begging him, and his fingers grab onto my hips, digging into my flesh. But he doesn’t fuck me.

“You’re an asshole,” I breathe as I rub myself on him.

His chest presses into my back. I look down and see his pierced head poking out from between my legs. One hand wraps around my chest and roughly grabs my breast, fingers pinching the nipple. I squirm in his arms and he breathes into my ear.

“Language.” He rubs a palm over my ass. I push myself even further into him. He bites my earlobe and my cunt throbs. “You don’t want to be punished any harder, do you?”

A slap echoes around the apartment and I gasp against the sting while juices slick Eric’s dick still nestled between my legs. I rub myself along his length, press into him, beg him with my body, but he doesn’t relent.

“How about one for that orgasm you shouldn’t have had?”

His other hand leaves my breast and slaps my other ass cheek, stinging the sensitive flesh. I gasp again and just for a flash of a second I feel the pain, but it quickly dissolves into lust as I grind my teeth together. He pushes me down lower, his hand between my shoulder blades, moves my knees out farther with his, exposing me even more. One more slap and it’s ass and thigh and cunt, the sting hitting my opening and I’m panting, crying out his name. Begging him for release. He laughs and runs his fingers along my pussy, poking a finger into my opening.

So I spin around and shove him down onto the bed and straddle his cock.

“Enough,” I say with hooded eyes, a sneer on my face.

Eric smiles back, his tongue between his teeth, his eyes on mine. His hands are on my hips, guiding me as I grab his dick and mount him. His length is a welcome release as my pussy stretches to take him in. And once the stud reaches that most sensitive spot, I gasp and let out an ‘oh.’

A sinister smile spreads across Eric’s face and he says, “I told you.”

And I ride him, my hands on his chest, my hips rolling back and forth on top of him, grinding into him. His fingers dig into me and he snarls like a lion, baring his teeth. I lower myself over him, my breasts pushing into his chest, our sweat slicking our bodies together, and bounce my hips on top of him, something I know will hit that under-stud squarely where it needs to be hit. Moans ride out of his throat and his head pulls back, his mouth open, his eyes clamped shut.

I don’t let that last long. Instead I sit up and pull him with me, our bodies pressing together as we sit, joined together in blinding pleasure. Heat prickles my neck, sweeps stars across my vision, as all my tension builds. We grind ourselves together. I lean back and he holds me up as I roll my hips over and over again, taking him deeper and deeper.

Then he’s on stop of me and for a moment we freeze. Sweat trails down my temples, pools between our bodies. I catch condensation collecting on the windows out of the corner of my eyes, and right now Eric’s face has my full attention. He brushes hair away from my face, cradles my chin in his hand. Our lips meet, and it’s as if sex has nothing to do with it. The kiss is light, gentle, nothing like what we’re doing with the rest of our bodies. Lips hover over lips, tongues dance coyly with each other.

But it only lasts a moment before the hunger devours us both and we’re lost to it. Consuming the energy from each other as if it’s our only means of survival.

He lifts my ass up, angles me so I can take him deep. So that special piercing hits me just right as he thrusts, and the stars grow bigger. I don’t hide my moans, my gasps, and neither does he. I clamp onto his arms, his back, his neck, holding on for dear life as he thrusts. 

My world is an explosion so exquisite it feels like death, my life pausing in a moment before the end until life floods back to me in a rush. My throat is hoarse and I’m jerking from the orgasm, wrapping myself in it trying to ride the wave all the way down. Eric pants on top of me, groans as he releases himself into me, and I feel him pulse, our beats matching.

He collapses on top of me, our bodies slick with sex and sweat, and I don’t want to be any place else. I’ve forgotten. I’ve shuttered the unpleasantness away. Replaced it with . . . This. It doesn’t feel right, but it feels far from wrong.

I’ve adapted. I want to live. I still see death when I close my eyes, but as I gasp for air I inhale Eric’s scent and it brings light to the dark. I let him in and he saved me from a moment that would have consumed me. He helped me in his own dark way. But the mask of Eric is just a mask. I know that now. There’s more there, far below the surface. I must mine it because just maybe I can use it. The mask of Eric will help me adapt to the horror I must do in order to survive. In order to complete my own private mission.

The other Eric, the one long-buried, maybe I can save that one, or what’s left of him, before he’s lost forever.

Fingers thread their way through my hair and an arm wraps around my waist as Eric settles his head on my chest. Sleep’s hit me like a truck and I don’t fight it. I wrap my arms around him, listen to him breathe, and let the night take me.


	17. 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this up, everyone! It's just been an exhausting weekend (and last five weeks), but hopefully I can get my bearings back ASAP. It's been hard keeping up with my normal schedule lately. In the meantime here's another chapter! Thank you so much for the love you've been showing my story!

Dawn is just starting to push the night away when I crack open my eyes. The sky is just turning gray and my apartment isn’t so dark anymore. The small lamp next to my bed is still on, but I can see farther into my apartment than before. Fewer shadows now.

A weight on my chest draws my tired eyes and I look down to find Eric wrapped around me, his head on my bare chest, his bare body pressed up against mine. I think we fell asleep like this. Looks like we didn’t move at all. The night before comes flooding back, pushing through my sleep haze, and I feel my ears turn red and my core begins to burn all over again.

The things we did. I want to keep doing them.

But right now I’m too exhausted and I press my head back into the pillow as my fingers find Eric’s arm and lightly brush along his tattoos, tracing patterns over patterns, soaking in the feel of his skin.

It takes me a minute to realize what I’m tracing. I’m practically halfway back into sleep when I realize the blocky, hard-lined designs on his arms aren’t what my fingers are feeling. What I feel as I run my hand along his arm are knots of flesh. Little circles. Cross hatches that, when I look down, don’t match the pattern of black ink drawn on his skin.

I don’t press down into his arm, afraid I’m going to wake him, but I stare at the black standing stark against the skin of my stomach. I feel scars and they have nothing to do with his tattoos.

The room grows brighter, inch by inch, and my eyes rove over the parts of his body I can see. Bare shoulder, the curve of his back. At first I see nothing. Nothing telltale, anyway. But when the gray turns to a lighter shade of blue I see the white lines. Carved up flesh, a thousand tiny cuts punctuated with a handful of larger, meaner, scars.

What the hell am I looking at?

When I look back down at his sleeping head, its no longer sleeping. He stares at me with blue eyes so piercing I feel nailed to the bed. Confusion riddles my face. I know it. I feel my eyebrows pulling down into a frown. He props himself up on one arm, taking the weight off of me but still keeping his other arm draped over my body. He says nothing. Just continues to stare.

I reach out and brush my fingers along the tattoos on his neck, the harsh, hard lines of blocks carved into his flesh. And I feel them. Raised lines that don’t match the design. Traveling against the design. Slit against his flesh.

His eyes drop and it takes me a second to realize he’s staring at my own angry scar. My bullet wound. But it’s not my only scar. As if seeing me for the first time, eyes not clouded by lust, he looks over my body and sees what’s been there for years. My own battle scars. A gash across my stomach from knife training gone awry. A streak of knotted flesh on my hip, grazed by a bullet. My legs covered in bruises. Those might as well be permanent. I haven’t not seen bruises on my legs in I don’t know how long.

I’m staring at my own history carved into my flesh and I feel lips press into the bullet scar. Goosebumps ripple out across my skin and I sigh at their touch. I run my hand through his hair and he looks up at me, his full lips swollen, waiting. I press my lips to his and I can still taste myself on his mouth. He presses into the kiss and I welcome him. Always welcome.

He runs his thumb along my jaw and sits up, walking over to a pile of clothes on the floor and sorting through them until he finds his pants.

“You should think about ink,” he says as he pulls his clothes back on. What a shame. “Take yourself back. It helps.”

I nod, but he’s not looking at me. I can imagine the feel of the needle as it digs through my skin, tearing up the scar caused by someone else and turning into something better by my own will. Yeah, I can see it helping. Makes sense why Dauntless are so marked up. Maybe I’ll join that club.

Then another thought comes to mind, one that sends a rush of cold coursing through my body. Jeanine. Fucking Jeanine. I can only imagine what she’d do to us if she found out. Business and pleasure, the two don’t mix according to her. Never will. 

“We need to keep this from Jeanine,” I say, taking an inordinate amount of interest in a hangnail. I pick at it until it bleeds.

“Then we keep it from Jeanine,” he says matter-of-factly. 

His boots fall heavy on the floor as he walks back over to me, his eyes roving my naked body. I haven’t bothered to cover up, but the chill in the air is getting to me. I can hide the shiver but not the goosebumps as they prickle along my arms and chest. Without missing a beat Eric yanks the blanket from the bed and drapes it around my shoulders, cocooning me in warmth. He rubs his hands along my arms before grabbing my face and tilting my lips to meet his.

At first it’s something gentle, fluttering kisses. Then is dissolves into something more. Something harder. I wrap my arms, and the blanket, around his shoulders, and he slides into my cocoon, pressing his body against mine.

“And everyone else,” I say when our lips part and he presses his lips to my forehead. “I don’t trust Kai as far as I can throw her. She’ll narc the first chance she gets if she thinks it’ll bury me.”

“Not everyone,” he says as he steps out of my arms. “Just people like her. I don’t spend much time with them anyway. And neither should you.”

His blue eyes shine in the dawning morning and I have to blink back the brightness. “No need to worry there.”

He smiles before he grabs his jacket off the floor. “Training at oh-nine-hundred,” he says before he smirks and walks out of my apartment, leaving me swaddled in my blanket and breathing just a little heavier than normal.

**#**

Training’s getting ruthless and I watch Peter beat the ever-loving shit out of Tris at Eric’s encouragement. He pays me no mind as he sanctions the fight. Just stands there with his arms crossed, watching Peter bounce around and ready himself for a fight. She gets in a couple of good hits, but nowhere near enough to do any damage to him. I nearly wince when he deals her the final blow and she’s down for the count.

When we’ve dismissed the initiates, and Tris has been carried off to the infirmary, the trainers stand at the leaderboard and start weighing scores, plugging in qualitative measurements into the algorithms on top of the points system we’ve concocted.

It breaks my heart to see so many names in the red. So many about to get eliminated. Forced into being Factionless. And for what? Because they didn’t live up to Dauntless’s ridiculous standards?

“Tris is done,” Eric says as he stares at his hand-held, typing information into the screen.

“We’re not done with initiation yet,” I say, my arms crossed over my chest. “She doesn’t get eliminated unless she’s at the bottom at the end.”

“There’s still the fear landscapes,” Four adds. 

Eric drops his hand-held, his eyes steady on me before sliding them over to Four. The glare his fixes on his counterpart could melt steel. “Did you see the same fight I did? She can’t hack it physically. I don’t care what she can do mentally.”

“It’s not just your call,” Four says, and takes a step closer to Eric. I watch Eric pull himself up straighter, drop his arms at his sides, and look down his nose at Four. There’s something more here than a bad call on an initiate. “We all get a say in how the initiates are ranked.”

The corner of Eric’s mouth quirks up into a snide little smile that doesn’t go anywhere near his eyes. Those baby blues remain dead, cold, and I take a hopefully unnoticed step back.

“You can have your say, Four. But initiate training is mine. You know that. Tris isn’t living up to Dauntless’s new standards. I don’t see a lot of hope for her. So she’s gone.”

The tone of his voice sends chills down my spine. Him speaking of another human being as if she’s a bag of trash that needs to be disposed of makes my stomach turn. The Eric that fucked me like an animal, the one who fluttered kisses on my face, smiled at my bad jokes, is someone completely different to the man I’m seeing here. Adapted, he said. More like split in two. But he’s one of Jeanine’s favorites. He didn’t get there being nice to people. If that’s what I truly need to do, I don’t know if I can do it.

“Eric, at least give her until the end of training. Give her a chance to improve.” The pleading in my voice is pathetic, but I can’t help it. I hate even thinking it, but this isn’t fair.

He looks up at me from under hooded eyes and if looks could kill my heart would have stopped. “I understand you don’t want any of your initiates to fail because it reflects on you, but my decision’s final. Our parameters are non-negotiable.”

It’s a knife to my gut and I want to yank it out and stab him in the neck with it. I don’t consider myself a failure because Tris got knocked out by someone twice her size before she was ready to fight him. And I know, somewhere in my rational brain, this is the public Eric. The Eric everyone knows. The Eric everyone expects. But in this moment, I fucking hate him.

“Oh Bo.” I turn to Kai and see the mockery of sadness on her face, her bottom lip pouting out. “It’s okay. We all knew you were a failure anyway so this wasn’t a surprise.”

My eyes are on her, but I still see faces in my periphery. Neither Eric nor Four emote and, to my surprise, Bennie’s giving Kai a death glare from next to her. Huh.

“You looking for another black eye from me, Kai? Your existence is exhausting, you know that?”

A sinister smirk pulls up her lips and I can’t help but sneer. “I’m sure Max will want to know how much of a failure you are.”

I can’t take it anymore, Kai’s pettiness. She’s had a bug up her ass about me since I walking into Dauntless and I have no idea why. No one else has held a grudge. Not even Jesse or Crunch. Maybe she was a big bad before I strolled in. I’m not looking to take her place, but that won’t make her any less territorial, I’m sure. Maybe she thought herself Jeanine’s favorite, or close to. Hate to break it to her, but if she was I’d have heard of her. Max and Eric came up fairly often. Kai? Didn’t know she existed before getting here. Whatever it is she can deal with it on her own.

I turn to Eric and say, “Are we done here?”

He looks up at me and then at the leaderboard. “Yeah. For now. Four, get the gear for tonight’s game. Meet back in the Pit at eight.”

“For what?” I ask with a frown.

“Capture the flag,” he says, a hint of snide annoyance to his voice. Now he’s overcompensating and it’s just fucking annoying me. “Part of training.”

I scrunch up my face, letting my distaste show. “Nah. I’ll pass.”

He stands there, holding his device, and giving me a blank look like he doesn’t understand the words I just said. “You’ll pass.”

“Yes. I’ll pass. I need a break,” I say with a bit of a shit-eating grin.

“What the fuck makes you so special?” Kai spits, her arms crossing over her chest.

“Well, you for one. Because you won’t leave me the fuck alone,” I spit back, and actually really wanting to spit in her face.

“Give it a fucking rest, Kai. Shit. Let’s go.” Bennie fists the shoulder of Kai’s jacket and drags the sneering woman away from the group. A couple others follow, including a smirking Four who’s trying so hard to hide it but is failing rather miserably.

Within a minute it’s just Eric and me and he’s still somewhat stunned, his face stone.

“And you’ll be doing what?” he asks, a little indignant with just a smidge of curiosity thrown in.

I shrug as I start walking backward, leaving him there by himself. “I think I’ll get some ink,” I say as I smile, my eyebrow quirking up.

Shithead.

His hands drop to his sides and I watch him shake his head while he laughs, trying to hide it in the device he pulls back up, his finger pecking at the screen. He and I are going to have to have a talk. We’re not going to keep shit quiet if he and I are biting at each other more than usual.

But that can wait. Now I have some planning to do. Yeah, I really think I’m going to get some ink. But with everyone out playing their games, the herd’s going to thin and I have some fact-finding to do.


	18. 18

Of course Dauntless has their own tattoo parlor. Why wouldn’t they? It’s where I find Tori, the artist that came highly recommended. She can do anything, people said. I’m hoping that’s true.

When I walk into the lounge area of the parlor the lights are dim and music filters through the speakers, some kind of metallic din that I have a hard time picking up over the ambient noise of voices and buzzing needles. There aren’t too many people in here right now. Just a couple, in fact, and only one is getting inked. I spot Tori toward the back cleaning up her station and I walk over to her.

“Hey,” I say, keeping a respectful distance and making sure I don’t sneak up on her.

She turns around, a somewhat annoyed look on her face, as if I interrupted her while she was doing something profound.

“Yeah?” she says, her eyebrows raised as she crumbles a paper towel in her hand.

“Bad time?” I ask, picking up on her none-to-subtle attitude. This is the first time I’ve ever talked to her and no one’s said anything about her being in a mood so I don’t know how to take the hostile air I’m getting from her right now.

As if flipping a switch her posture deflates a little and she blinks, as if turning off her inner bitch, and she rubs a hand across her forehead.

“No,” she says, hardly more than a whisper. “Long day.”

“I can come back.” I start to move away but she places her hand on my arm, her fingers barely grazing my sleeve, and I stop.

“It’s fine,” she says. “Just a long day.” She notices the hand-held I’m holding and nods toward it. “You got something you want?”

I keep staring at her face for a moment longer before I pull up the image I found. The basis for what I have in mind. It’s perfect. I hand the device over to her and she zooms in on it and shifts it around the screen. Her eyes widen as she stares at the screen and then looks up at me.

“This is what you want?”

I nod. It’s shoulder armor. Something I saw once in the archives a long time ago. A piece used by soldiers and something called gladiators thousands of years ago. The piece will drop down nicely over my scarring and cover about half my upper arm.

“Except I, uh,” I start, hesitating. Afraid that what I’m about to explain will be dumb. I don’t know why I’m concerned about what this woman thinks of the tattoo I want, but I am. “I actually want the cap to be a dragon claw and the scaling to be iridescent, like green, blue, and black. Like fish scales? So it kind of starts off as normal armor closer to the breast plate and then turns into the arm of a dragon.”

I nearly cringe at the words. Dragons and scales and claws. She must think I’m nuts. But I watch her face and she doesn’t flinch, wince, or otherwise emote much of anything. Instead she stares at the image, lost in her own head, and starts nodding.

“Yeah, okay. I got something,” she says, tapping the side of her head. She looks at me and waves the device. “Give me a couple of hours to work something up and we can get this started tonight. I can do it in one go, but you’re looking at five to six hours of work.”

“That’s fine,” I say, keeping the sigh of relief on the inside. “I’ll come back after dinner.”

Tori gives me a quick smile before handing back the device and disappearing through a door at the back of the parlor. This is perfect. I have time to grab something to eat, grab some confidential information out of Max’s office, and get back to the parlor to get my skin carved up. Just a regular night in Dauntless.

**#**

Surveillance runs in loops and the eyes on the screens aren’t allowed to roll back on any one area or frame without higher authorization. Really, they aren’t doing a whole lot in that particular control room except being security guards. Notice something suspicious, report it, check it out, but what could possibly be going on that would cause serious concern?

I mean, Dauntless members wouldn’t turn on each other, right?

Right.

Well, I guess it depends on whether I consider myself a member of Dauntless. I’m getting a tattoo in a few hours. The only piece of initiation I have left is the fear landscape. Looks like I’m pretty close to it. But not yet. So technically I’m not a faction member going against the faction. Just someone in between trying to solve a problem.

Yeah. Like anyone would see it that way if I get caught.

Being so closely connected to high level leadership in the faction it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me to be walking through those basement hallways. I mean, I could very well be looking for Max in his office. Except I already know he’s not there. He’s at an Erudite meeting with Jeanine. Another irksome thing. It’s starting to feel like she threw me away when she handed me over to Dauntless. If I weren’t trying to destroy her I might care.

I pull out my device and pull up the back door code to get into the security mainframe. The downside for Dauntless, at least, is being in Erudite I learned a lot of things, tech being one of them. Not only was I getting my ass handed to me in training for eight years, but I was also a functioning member of Erudite society as well. I know my way around computers, certain types of labs, and draft designs.

The door to Max’s office passes by on my left as I walk by and I keep walking, keeping my body over my screen to hide it, making it look like I’m focusing on something while I walk. Once I’m out of lens shot from the last camera I stop and press myself up against the wall. I pull up the bank of camera shots on the screen and watch as they flip from one to another. I’m not trying to not get caught on camera. I just want to make sure I’m not caught on the screen by the eyes on the other side of the monitors. If they don’t find anything suspicious, my lurking in the hallway will go unnoticed. No rewinding. No reviewing.

So I wait. When the quadrant of hallway I’m closest too disappears from the screen I make my way back to Max’s door. I have roughly twenty seconds to get myself into the office before his door pops up on their screens. I scuttle back down the hallway, glancing at my hand-held.

Fifteen.

And someone comes walking up the hallway. My heart clogs my throat and I stop and frown down at my screen, as if I’m trying to work through something particularly difficult. I briefly look up and don’t really recognize the person walking toward me.

Ten.

A man vaguely familiar. Maybe somewhere in leadership I don’t interact with too often. But we both nod at each other, a subtle hello, and he keeps on walking. His boots clicking on the stone floor. I take deep breaths, desperately trying to slow my heart. I turn around and watch the man turn a corner. I listen as his clicking boots get farther away.

Five.

I shoot to Max’s door, turn the handle and slide in through the crack I make. My eyes are glued to my screen as I close the door as quickly and as silently as possible. The camera just outside the door triggers and I see what security sees: Max’s closed door, no sign of anything amiss.

It takes a second for my heart to stop thudding. Cold sweat prickles the back of my neck and I bend my head back, trying to brush it off on my shirt. But I don’t stand there long. I’m not taking my time here. The longer I stay, the higher the chance of me getting caught. It’s too early in the game for that.

So I beeline for his computer, which isn’t locked. Dauntless through and through. More focused on physical security than technical security. I root through a few meaningless folders before finally finding something. It’s only labeled with digits, but the combination is poking at something in my head. As if it’s a set of numbers that should mean something to me, but I don’t know why.

When I open it I get more folders, all labeled with numbers. They’re jumbling more in my head, but I know these aren’t random numbers. There’s order here. I just need to figure out what.

So I click on one. It brings me to two more folders. One labeled Clean Sweep and the other Findings. My breathing’s gone back up and my hand shakes as I tap on Clean Sweep.

It only contains one file, a video. I click on it, nearly holding my breath, and wait for it to load. I double-check the volume and make sure it’s high enough for me to hear but low enough not to carry and I hit play. 

At first it’s a jumble of people. It looks like I’m looking through a camera mounted on a helmet and the mount is turning their head back and forth like crazy. But when they finally steady my heart stops.

It’s a Factionless building. Quiet on the outside. Whatever I’m looking at they’re mobilizing. Nothing’s happened yet. Then bodies pour out in front of the camera, filing out of a truck, maybe? And then the camera moves. Follows the rest of the people. Dauntless people dressed in tactical gear. Body shields and armor, rifles, grenades strapped and at the ready. As if they’re about to stop a riot. Or start one.

A door up ahead bursts open and screams erupt from within the building. The next few seconds are a blur as the person the camera’s attached to runs, shaking the image as they go. People scatter and scream, running away from the black cloud converging on their home.

A mash-up of faction clothes swirls in the frame and the pop of a gun makes me jump. Then the triggers come fast and I watch people trip and sprawl out on the ground. A puddle of blood pools under someone who fell.

“Over here!” a voice yells and the camera follows it.

I near choking as the Factionless man from the extraction shows up on screen, his body trembling but his eyes hard and glittering. 

“Is this her?” someone else says from off screen and a child gets knocked to the ground at a pair of boots. I can’t tell who they’re attached to.

Someone must answer the person because without a second thought there’s another pop and the girl falls to the floor in a motionless heap. An earth-shattering wail breaks through the din and my eyes cloud with tears. The man looks to the girl and I can see the tears leaking down his cheeks, dropping to the dirt. He turns back to the camera, looking into it as if he’s staring directly at me, as if he knows his killer is on the other side of the lens.

“Enough,” he says and the screen goes black.

With a shaking hand I close out the video. The numbers are dates. Dates of raids. I think I just watched the one that happened when I went to see Emmanuel. I want nothing to do with the Findings file, but my hand moves as if it has a mind of its own. This one’s only a document, but it’s filled with notes. Nothing’s dated but as I scroll through them I find my name and my world comes to a standstill.

It documents the torture. Every little thing I did to the man. Every piece of information that was extracted out of him before I got there and the very little amount of information he spit out before I killed him. But it doesn’t say I killed him. The words “Madeline Bordonaro killed this Factionless man” are not written in the file. Instead it just says “deceased without additional information disclosed.” How cold and distant from the murder that took place in that room, at the blood on my hands. Now there’s written proof of what I’ve done. It’s not just in my past, festering in my memories. Dredging up nightmares. It’s permanent. It might as well be tattooed on my forehead.

I back out of that file and see another folder with the same date and I click on it. Instead of two files there’s just one and it has a name: Malachi Rachsbuck. My first thought: what a name. My second thought: he’s not alive anymore.

And when I start reading my thoughts are confirmed and my name is carved into history once again. This was the man in the first room. The Dauntless transfer for whom I gave torture recommendations. Food tosses around in my gut as I read about the successful techniques I recommended. How he started screaming the second he smelled smoke. How he screamed his throat bloody to the point of actually coughing it up.

I read about the locations of Divergent hideouts. Of Factionless sympathizers. The names of a couple Abnegation families known to be harboring Divergents. I ex out of the document, the window, and put the computer back into sleep mode. Something I probably won’t be doing tonight. 

No. I’ll be getting carved up with a needle. I’ll need that painful release.

I stand up and roll the chair back to where it was and pull out my hand-held with the hallway cameras up on screen. A couple people walk on by and I count the seconds as I wait for the hallway to be clear. When my window of opportunity finally comes up I crack open the door and peek through, quickly scanning the hallway. Nothing.

Except when I open the door and make to walk through a hard body stops me in my tracks. Well, actually the force sends me stumbling back and he takes a step back to catch himself.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the man asks and my heart thuds in my throat, choking me.

Stars burst in front of my eyes and it’s a moment before I can see straight. Only then does the face in front of me come into focus.

“Four?” My mouth can’t seem to form words as I gape at him, but finally a few make their way out.”I could ask you the same damn thing.”

Instead of answering he grabs my jacket and yanks me to him, his hand covering my mouth, muffling my scream.


	19. 19

“Quiet,” his haggard whisper is loud in my ear as I struggle against his hold. “If you don’t want to get caught, cut it out.”

I remember my hand-held just before I bumped into Four and I lose the concept of time. How many seconds had just passed? As if reading my mind he hustles us down the hallway. I dig my fingers into his hand and he gets the hint and lifts his up, freeing my mouth. I don’t need to be kept from screaming. If I were being even more prideful I’d wrench my arm out of his grip, but I let him continue guiding me around a corner.

We walk in silence down another couple corridors until we come to an area where we can actually explain our presence, far enough away from Max’s office that I can exhale a huge breath of relief and slow my pace. When he jerks me around to face him is when I remember he still has hold of my arm. Then I do yank it out of his grip.

“Care to explain yourself?” I ask, indignation thick in my tone. If I’m lucky he’ll go on the defensive.

“You first,” he says, his breathing slowing.

Not lucky.

I stand up tall, as tall as I can next to him, and cross my arms over my chest. “Not particularly.”

“Look,” he says, looking down the hallway behind him before looking back to me. “Whatever either of us were doing, it wasn’t in the faction’s favor. Fair to say?”

I nod and move my hands to my hips. “Whatever we were doing we were doing it outside the sight of the cameras.” I crook my eyebrow up at him. My voice low. “You’re training initiates now. What do you do again?”

“Tech. Security and control room.” Well that explains it. “How’d you figure out the cameras?”

I clear my throat and frown. “I used the lump three feet above my ass. It’s not difficult to pick up patterns. Plus,” I say, looking back over my own shoulder before looking at him again, “I’m from Erudite. If I couldn’t figure that out then I didn’t belong in the faction.”

His eyes trail down my outfit, my Dauntless outfit, before landing on my face again. “Yet you’re here.”

“And what you did wasn’t Dauntless or Abnegation. Security just watches screens. What you did it’s . . . smart. Where’d you learn it?”

There was some limited overlap before the Choosing Ceremony, when we were all getting our regular education. The factions mixed and educated each other. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had some computer tech training all those years ago. But it wouldn’t explain how he’d still have it now, unless he kept on top of it himself.

“Not here,” he says, obviously dodging my question. “Why are you really here? In Dauntless?” he asks, his fingers wrapping around my arm.

I look down at them and stare. If flames could shoot out of my eyes he’d be scorched. He must feel the heat of my gaze because he lets go. “That’s above your pay grade,” I respond and rub my arm.

I’m done here, not only because I’ll be late for my appointment with Tori, but because there’s something here I don’t want to know about. Something I can’t fit in my head right now and I’d rather not have it taking up such desirable real estate in my brain.

“You’re being put through the fear landscape tomorrow,” he says to my back and I don’t turn around. At least that way he can’t see me close my eyes against what he just said. My last bit of initiation. The scenario even worse than Candor’s truth serum. Trying to hide all my thoughts, my fears, in plain sight like that will exhaust me beyond anything else. “I’ll be your proctor.”

That does stop me. I figured it’d be Eric or Max administering that one. I turn around and he’s standing in the same spot, the gap between us wide, so I close it just a little.

“Why you?”

“I know the system the best,” he says, this time crossing his arms over his chest. Blocking himself off. “They’re expecting you and me to be the same.” Four. Four fears. Everything human has been nearly beaten out of me. What’s left for me to be afraid of? “I think they’re right.”

A stiletto made of ice pierces my heart and all the heat in me drains away. The way he says it, the tone, how he dropped his voice just slightly, he’s insinuating something more than just having few fears. The fear landscape, these simulations, they’re where Divergents are found. It’s how they’re best exposed because most of them can’t hide. They don’t know how. But he’s not accusing me of anything. No. He’s . . . aligning.

I pull myself together, snap down the curtain of stone so he sees nothing. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

I nod my head at him. Four uncrosses his arms and nods back. I turn around, my back to him a second time, and walk away, back toward the Pit. Between the files on Max’s computer and Four . . . Is he telling me he’s Divergent? Is he saying he knows I’m Divergent? So many things could be insinuated in what he said. What with him lurking around Max’s office, he’s searching for something too. Maybe I beat him to it.

My heart hammers as I ascend a set of stairs, the noise in the Pit growing. My head swims. I have no idea how to process any of this. The more run-ins I have with him, the more I believe he’s not some insidious plant from Max looking to dig in and find something on me. Four doesn’t even interact with any of them, not to mention it looks like he and Eric hate each other. Shit. Just when I find out one thing, I dig the hole a little deeper and find something else, something that could be even worse. 

Four a Divergent and he quite possibly knowing I’m one too. My snooping was telling. We have things to hang over each others’ heads. But he’s helped me, however little. No, this is something more. He’s digging. Alone. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

 

#

 

The buzzing sounds like a drill and I flinch when Tori turns the needle on. It’s nowhere near my skin yet but for some reason I’m terrified of it. For everything I’ve gone through, everything that’s been done to me. Hell, she’s about to cover scarring from a damn bullet wound. Yet I’m flinching at the high-pitched rattle of a needle. Maybe because I’m doing this to myself? Because I made an appointment to have it done? I’m expecting it?

I have no idea, but when I look down I see my hands shaking and grip harder onto my legs. Cold sweat prickles my top lip and I quickly wipe it off on my sleeve. Few things make me nervous. Even fewer things make me outwardly nervous. Apparently tattoo needles is one of those things.

“You can sit,” she says, motioning to the chair.

I slowly walk up to it, see the metal tray with the little caps of ink. The needle, this bulky looking pen with a cord, sits on its side next to the sink. I take a deep breath and lower myself onto the chair. All of a sudden I’m freezing. Or I convince myself I’m freezing, because my teeth are chattering.

“I wouldn’t think you’d be this nervous,” Tori says, a small smile on her face as she pulls on some latex gloves.

“Neither did I,” I mutter as I lean back.

She leans forward, her hands on her knees, and stares at me. At first I look away, around the room, at the lights, the designs on the wall, anywhere but her. But she keeps staring and I fidget under her gaze.

“Do we start or . . .” I feebly try to break the silence and I watch her wilt, her eyes dropping under the hoods of her eyelids.

“You need to take off your shirt.”

Heat replaces the cold flowing over my body. Duh. She can’t tattoo through the shirt sleeve. I look around the room and the door is closed. No one’s going to walk by and see anything. So I pull the shirt over my head, revealing a camisole underneath. I pull the strap down, leaving Tori with my exposed arm and shoulder.

We went over the design when I walked into the parlor. I know what it looks like on paper. But I can’t stop the goosebumps from prickling my skin as she wipes it down and presses the transparency to my flesh. She had to have done this a hundred times. More. She doesn’t flinch as she rubs the design over the knot of scarring, making sure the design’s transferred thoroughly.

She flicks on the needle and I try to hide a gasp, but do a poor job of it.

“No sudden movements and remember to breathe,” she says and I nod. “If you need a break just say so.”

I swallow hard, listening to the metallic buzz of the needle, and nod again. I close my eyes and wait for the pain I know is coming. Tori presses her fingers into my skin, pulls it taught, and the needle comes down. I concentrate on my breathing: inhale, exhale. When I don’t feel the screaming pain I thought was coming I open my eyes. After another few seconds I look down and see her working. I feel it, the needle dragging across my skin. She goes over my collarbone and it’s less than pleasant, but I’ve broken bones that hurt worse than this. Far worse.

I breathe deeply and settle back into the chair and let my gaze wander around the room.

“Not as bad as you thought?” Tori asks, her gaze focused on the design.

“No,” I say. I look over to her and see her smile.

“Depends on where you get it. You’ll have a few sensitive spots here, but nothing like your lower back, neck, under arm, ribs. Thin skin, areas that aren’t exposed to getting hit, or where there are clusters of nerve endings are going to be the worst.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, thinking of the ink on Eric’s neck. That’s one of the worst places, Tori said. I don’t know what the designs mean to him, but the fact that they’re crawling up his neck is deliberate. Hiding something, eating the pain, I have no idea.

We break a few times throughout the course of the piece. I promised myself I wouldn’t peek at it until she was done and thankfully there aren’t any mirrors in the room. At least none that I can see.

A knock echoes through the door and I immediately look to Tori. She frowns and looks toward the door.

“Room’s in use. That’s what the closed door means,” she yells to the person on the other side.

“It’s Eric,” comes the muffled response.

Tori hands me a paper towel and I drape it over my shoulder, covering the unfinished piece. I don’t want to see it until it’s done. No one else gets to see it half complete either. I reach for the knob and turn it, opening to see a freshly showered Eric, the delectable soap smell wafting off of him nearly overwhelming me. I frown.

“What time is it?” I ask, confused. I know I’ve been here for a while but I didn’t think it could have been that long.

“Nearly one,” he says, he face soft. “We’ve been back for a couple hours.”

I nod and back away from the door, giving him room to enter. “How’d it go?”

I look over to Tori and she’s not-so-subtly tucking her head away from us, busying herself with something out of sight.

“Not as expected,” he says as he tries to lift the towel off my shoulder. I slap his hand away and he laughs.

“You can see it when it’s done.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Did you need something?”

He looks over to Tori and I follow his gaze, seeing her busy herself, trying her very best not to notice the two of us having an awkward, if not strained, conversation. He purses his lips together and shakes his head.

“Just wanted to see if you were still cranky from earlier,” he says with a smirk.

This isn’t a private conversation, not with Tori here. So this Eric is the mask, the one who’s supposed to be a bit of an ass. Who revels in coming out on top, in other people’s misery. I don’t speak to his statement. Instead I turn my back on him and walk back to the chair and take a seat.

“Goodnight, Eric,” I say, my voice flat, emotionless.

“Guess so,” he responds with a little smirk. “You should know she’s back in. Tris. Pulled herself out of the infirmary. Decided to join us tonight. Didn’t get killed. Max is allowing her another chance.”

The metallic rustling behind me halts for just a second, but I notice it. Eric notices it, and we both look to Tori. But before my eyes can even focus on her she’s back to rustling, rummaging, making herself look busy. I stare at her a second longer and turn back to Eric, who stares at her a little longer, his look hard and knife-tipped. It takes him a second longer to look back to me.

“Good for her,” I say as I lay my head back on the chair’s head rest, realizing for the first time that I’m in little more than a half-pulled together camisole. As if he hasn’t seen me in far less. But my cleavage is out, a corner of the shirt is caught up on my stomach, revealing the toned flesh there. I catch his eyes wandering, lingering on my exposed skin, and I prop up a leg, my knee bent. Where he stands his body falls between my legs and I watch the muscles in his jaw twitch. “Anything else?”

He swallows and nods to my shoulder. “Don’t think that’s going to get you out of training tomorrow.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say as he walks out, shutting the door behind him.

I listen to his boots tap on the floor as he moves away and I turn to Tori. I watch her as she sets back up, pulls the towel from my shoulder and prods at the tender skin there. I wince with each poke, but she doesn’t pay my pain any mind.

“You know Tris?” I ask her, my voice muffled as I lean back into the chair.

“No,” she says, almost too quickly.

“You don’t agree with the eliminations.”

The needle buzzes in her hand and she dips it in the ink before looking up at me. She doesn’t say anything. Not sure that I expected her to. She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her. The room drops a few degrees and I bite back a chill crawling across my skin. The rest of the work is done in silence, the only thing keeping me company as I endure the pain of the needle is its droning buzz.


	20. 20

Just because it’s fear landscape day doesn’t mean the initiates get out of physical training. I work them until they’re sweating, panting, gasping for air. Then I work them some more. No sense in going into a scenario totally prepared. Anyone can plan until their heart’s content, but plans go to shit so easily. They need to know this. They could be up against their worst fear and not ever be prepared for it. They might not even know what their fears are. Might as well add to the surprise.

The thing about fear landscapes, they can change. For the most part those baser fears living deep within a person will always be there. Most people aren’t brave enough to face them, overcome them, and send them on their way. So they live with it and hope it never comes up. But what I was afraid of at sixteen wasn’t the same thing I was afraid of at twenty and it’s certainly not the same things I’m afraid of now. I’m not sure how blind I am going into this and my expectations are limited.

Not to mention Four’s the proctor. Or so he said. I still don’t know what that means or why he mentioned it. I still think he was trying to tell me something, but I can’t put my finger on just what it is. I keep thinking he was talking about Divergents, but that couldn’t have been it, could it?

Eric lets them all shower and change before going into testing. So nice of him. As the younglings are all walking away he walks over to me, but I keep my eyes turned away.

“You ready for this?” he asks.

I turn to look at him, indignation on my face. “Really? Like this is my first time through a sim?”

“Cut the attitude, Bo.”

“No, Eric. You cut it.” I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You don’t hide us by being an even bigger dick to me in public. That draws just as much attention. Maybe more.”

“Dick nothing. You were looking for an exception to the rules and there are none.”

I shake my head. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. If this, whatever _this_ is, is going to work and we save our necks from Jeanine, as far as anyone’s concerned nothing can change. Nothing.”

We stand alone in the middle of the training room, a single beam of light lighting up the sparring mats next to us.It’s risky for us to be here like this, in the middle of the day, Anyone could walk in, but I appear to be more concerned about it than he is. I don’t think he really knows Jeanine, what she’s actually capable of. He got her from a distance all these years, piecemeal over time. I was immersed in her. I know her almost as good as she knows herself. And that self is terrifying.

Before I can think his fingers are on my neck and he’s yanking me forward, pressing his lips to mine. I open my mouth to him, invite him in, and he gladly enters, consuming me with his kiss. It lasts only a couple of seconds before he pulls away, placing one last peck to my lips.

“I’m not worried about _this_ ,” he says. “I’m worried about initiating Phase One to the letter.”

I nod into his hand, understanding what he’s saying. Not initiating Phase One exactly as Jeanine wanted will draw her down on us like a dragon and that’s the last thing we need. No more low profile after that.

He slides his hand away, holds my gaze for a moment, and takes his leave, leaving me there in the middle of the training room alone. Good. I need this moment to collect myself. Four is waiting for me to run me through a fear landscape. This is probably the only test I knew was coming and I’m going to prepare myself for it as much as possible.

Shuffling in the dark behind me draws my attention and I whip my head around, staring into the shadows.

“Hello?”

My voice echoes in the empty room, but nothing answers back. Things don’t just shift around in here. Someone was down here. I turn around fully and take slow, measured steps away from the light, toward the corner where the noise came from. I walk up to a bunch of stacked weights and peer around them. Nothing. I check the door nearby, the one closest to this cozy little hiding place. Nothing unusual. Doesn’t mean someone wasn’t here. And how long they were here remains to be seen.

I turn back around, toward the light, hyper-aware of eyes on the back of my neck, and refocus on the coming simulation. I’ve had some subtle changes in my fears over the years, but nothing major. Getting peppered with bullets popped up after I got shot. That was awful to go through, even knowing it wasn’t real. But now that I’m here, now that Eric’s in my life, in whatever way that is, I don’t know what fears I could be facing and that scares me even more.

My steps are slow, delaying the inevitable. I have a feeling I won’t be going first. Part of my torture will be to have my own examination drawn out until the very end. The best for last. Or the worst. Despite what I’m coming to know about Four, what I maybe suspect, I can’t let him in my head. I can’t let him know that I can manipulate the sims, that I know I’m in something fake. He’s already caught me red-handed once. That was stupid enough. It would just be downright deadly to be caught again.

By the time I make it up to the simulation lab only one initiate is left waiting. I sit down in a cold metal chair on the opposite side of the hallway, not making eye contact, and straining to hear what’s going on on the other side of the door. Silence answers me. They’ve sealed it off good.

A few minutes later the person in the room comes stumbling out, barely able to hold himself up. The initiate across from me stares wide-eyed, her jaw hanging open. I can see sweat trailing down her temple from where I sit. As if remembering where she is she snaps her head around and looks at Four, waiting in the doorway to be noticed by his next victim. I watch her swallow her nerves, gather herself up, and walk toward Four. He glimpses at me quickly before ushering the girl in and closing the door behind him.

Waiting in and of itself is torture and the minutes tick by. I try not to fidget, but my leg starts hopping of its own accord, ignoring my wishes. What must be an eternity later the door opens and the girl finds her own way out. She’s not as weak-kneed as the boy before her, but she’s at least three shades paler than when she went in and she’s wringing her hands so hard it looks like she might actually break her fingers.

Without waiting for him to call me, I pull myself up and walk toward the open door. Toward Four. I can’t help it. My heart beats just a little bit faster at what I’m about to do, despite the fact that I’ve done it dozens of times before. Hundreds? Who knows. I’ve lost count.

I seat myself, settling in until I’m comfortable while Four closes the door and gathers up a clean syringe.

“Do I need to explain any of this to you?” he asks, needle gun in hand as he stands over me.

I just raise my eyebrow and glare at him. He nods and leans down, positioning the needle on my neck. I brace myself for the pinch, but just before he moves to inject he whispers something to me and I nearly lose my composure.

“Don’t let your guard down.”

Before I can even manage a reaction the needle’s sliding into my flesh and the serum is pushed into my veins. It doesn’t take long. A few seconds at most. There’s enough time for me to watch Four walk back to the control podium, light to flood the dim room as the door opens. My vision goes fuzzy but I swear a man shaped like Eric walks into the room, but my serum takes hold and drags me into my darkest nightmares before I can grasp what is right in front of me.

I know my eyes are open. I can feel them blink. But it’s nothing but black all around me. A din of voices greets my ear, a low hum of noise that’s barely discernible as anything other than just noise. But then it rises in pitch and my first thought is: theater.

A split second before it happens I know exactly what’s coming. It’s not so black around me now and I see something flutter in front of me. Waver. Flutter. Then it shifts and for a second I’m disoriented, until I realize it’s going up. Like a curtain.

At first I only see shades of black, shadows against shadows as they waver in front of me. Then from nowhere a light shines down on me from above, harsh white and blinding, and I throw my hands up over my face to protect my eyes. 

When my sight finally adjusts I see nothing but harsh light. I look down and old, worn wood is under my bare feet. Planks hammered together. I’d seen it in pictures, wooden floors. I take a step back and can hear my feet echo on the floor around me. A wooden floor. A stage.

And my feet are bare. My shins. Thighs. I shift my hands in front of my bare pussy, trying to maintain some level of modesty. But my stomach and ribs, tits and chest, are all laid bare. My heart thuds wildly in my chest and I’m having a hard time breathing.

For a second I panic, disoriented. How did I get here? Where am I? Then it all snaps into place, like waking from a deep sleep. The fear landscape. The serum. None of this is real.

Still, I trail an arm across my breasts, my fingers wrapping around my upper arm. I look down and my tattoo, new and fresh, still a little swollen but the colors incredibly rich, shimmers over my skin. Like I just smeared lotion all over it. The sim even picks up that new addition. Great. And if I remember correctly, I think Eric walked into the room just as I was slipping under. Even greater.

Now, I just have to figure out what this fear is. Exposure of some kind. Being laid bare. People finding out everything about me. Well, at least my interpreting people finding out about my secrets is getting up in front of a crowd naked. Thank you, brain, for not tattooing DIVERGENT across my naked body. This makes things a little easier.

Dauntless face their fears head on. To run backstage would be to run and hide. To cover up would be to hide. So I lower my arms. This isn’t real. This isn’t really me. Except when I look down I see my body. Exactly what it looks like. And I know Four can see it too. Shit. Is Eric actually seeing this right now? He’s have to be plugged in and I know I’m not plugged into a monitor that anyone other than the proctor can see.

Not like any of this would be a surprise for him. Except the tattoo. It’s a stupid thought but I don’t want the first time he sees it to be with me in a sim. That’s cheating.

So what I need to do is walk straight into the crowd. Once I make that decision an Exit sign lights up in the back of the theater. A beacon. And I step toward the edge of the stage.

There are no steps down, but it’s only maybe three feet up so I jump down and land gently on my bare feet. Once I’m on the ground, though, the entire crowd stands up and steps toward me as one, as if they were all a single entity and not individual people. All of a sudden that exit sign seems incredibly far away.

I don’t know what this is, but my heart races in my chest and my breaths come in quick little bursts. No. Stop. There’s no reason to be afraid. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. But as the crowd takes a step closer I swallow hard but stand my ground. Dauntless would fight. So that’s what I’ll do.

I take my own step forward to meet the crowd and I watch some of the faces go from blank to angry, sneers flashing across lips, teeth showing, frowns deepening. I think back to my first little Dauntless test, getting tossed off the roof. I was overwhelmed. Powerless. The sim’s digging deep. This is horrifying for me, but as long as I keep reminding myself that this isn’t real I’ll be fine.

Every fiber of my being wants to just drop to the floor and close my eyes. Because none of it is real. I can literally just imagine it away. Instead I throw an elbow into the nearest nose and push into the crowd. I’m swarmed by a push of bodies, hands everywhere, fingers digging into my flesh, nails tearing across skin. I think I feel someone bite me and I wince and jerk away. I swing elbows, fists, kick, knee. Anything to get me through the crowd.

It’s slow going, but finally I make my way to the exist sign, through the crowd. I push open the door and light swallows me whole.

I wince at the brightness after the dark of the theater. I look down and I’m thankfully clothed, bedecked in Dauntless activewear. Our uniforms for things like patrol. Like what Eric and Max were wearing when they escorted me out of Erudite.

I’m in a field, away from the city and close to the fence. Dead, yellow grass crunches under my boots and a crow caws as it flies overhead. At first nothing is around me. When I blink Eric appears in front of me wearing the same uniform, a gun in his hand at his side, his finger on the trigger. A snarl twists his face and he actually looks like he’s about to kill me.

Another blink and Jeanine completes our little triangle. She stands there all stiff and straight, her hands held in front of her, cold eyes on me as her own little sneer ticks up her lip. Shit. I think I know where this is going.

“I don’t abide tr . . . .”

I can’t allow her to say it. Traitor. I can’t allow that seed to be planted, even if it’s only a fear. Someone will try to look into it. I don’t want to have to kill anyone I don’t have to. So I stop her words in her fake throat, twist them around to something a little more appealing. A little more palatable. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain the glitch as just that. It got stuck in my brain. I have no idea.

“. . . insubordination, Madeline. Eric,” she says as she looks over to him and I hear him thumb back the hammer as he raises the gun to point at me.

This is what I fear. Eric finding out what I am and me finding out there’s more mask than Eric left in his body. That he’s snuffed out too much of the human being he had and all that’s left in its place is the complicit soldier doing as he’s ordered. Possibly even enjoying what he’s doing.

This is also me facing my own death. Dauntless wouldn’t be afraid. But should I fight? For some sick reason the mask of Eric applauded suicide. Someone who’s strong would be brave enough to end their own life when they’re too weak. Honor. Pride. Except that whole concept contradicts itself. I don’t agree. Strength is working through the pain to fight it, not giving up. I will not give up. I’m not ready to die.

Instead of standing there accepting my fate, I kick out at the gun and nail Eric in his hand, sending the weapon flying. He reaches for another firearm on his belt and I grab his hand before he can touch it, twisting it away from the weapon. I grab that weapon too and drop the magazine before flinging it away.

There’s only one way this sim ends: one of us dead. 

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

It would be so easy to let my Divergence show. To change everything that’s happening here to make it easy for me. But then I would need to explain it. I can explain switching out a word. I can’t explain bastardizing an entire scene.

So we fight. We beat each other bloody. He nearly gets me but I don’t allow it. Instead I maneuver my way around him, position myself at his neck. I choke him. I weaken him. I feel ‘please’ slide out of my lips as tears trail down my cheeks. I don’t want to do this.

It’s not real.

All it takes is a tug and for something that isn’t real the crack of Eric’s neck sure does sound it. The feel of his spinal cord breaking away from his brain stem against my arm is something I will never forget. How his entire body goes limp in my arms is a weight I’ll never get rid of.

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

I close my eyes and allow the tears to flow. I hold his corpse in my arms, feel the heat leave him. When I open my eyes the scene is gone, dead Eric’s gone, replaced by the ruins of Chicago.

I’m not done. I have more fears to work through, except now I fear nothing. There can’t be anything worse than what I just did. And I feel myself die on the inside. Instead of having to keep convincing myself that none of this is real I let my Dauntless self shine. I allow the perfect warrior I’ve honed for all these years come out and I attack each fear as it comes with precision. Deadly accuracy.

By the end of it my fears fear me. When I wake up I’m in the chair with Four hovering over me and tears cloud my eyes.


	21. 21

I can’t help it. No matter how much I fight it I’m a sobbing mess. Tears trail down my cheeks in torrents, not caring that I just want them to go away. I’m hiccuping, I’m sobbing so hard.

“Breathe,” Four says as he stands next to the chair.

He doesn’t offer a comforting hand, which is good. I’d probably break it right now. Fuck. I hate being this vulnerable. This readable. This fragile. But I’m not fragile, am I? I’m just wound so tight that every once in a while I snap. Did I make the right decision in that sim? I must have because my fears kept coming. But it’s eating at me like I actually did it. Like I really snapped Eric’s neck. Like I’m the one responsible for ending his life. And Four saw every second of it.

I glare up at him, the words ready on my tongue when he says, “This is all confidential. I give them the results but not the particulars.”

My death glare must look ridiculous. All wet and sloppy, cheeks stained red. Eyes swollen. I wipe my sleeve across my face until it burns. At least now I have a valid excuse for being all red and splotchy.

“It’s okay to break every once in a while. You are human.”

Am I? I don’t say it. Instead I say, “Breaking was never an option in my life. Still isn’t.”

He cocks his head to the side, studies me. “Will this get you killed?” He nods to me, to my tears, and I shake my head. Not if no one finds out. “Then it’s an option.”

He clears his throat. “What isn’t an option is manipulating the sim.”

My tears freeze on my face, icicles stuck to my cheeks. I swallow and look up at him, my best confused frown knitting across my face. “What do you mean?”

The deadpan looks he gives me needles at my senses. His gaze makes me feel like I’m being scolded. And I think I am. “You know exactly what I mean. Someone less tech-savvy might not notice, but I’ve been working with computers a long time. The sim’s never glitched like that.”

“Like what?” I ask, still playing dumb. A wave of cold washes over me and an uncomfortable clammy flush creeps across my skin.

“Cut the shit,” he spits. “The Jeanine in your sim was going to call you something other than insubordinate and you changed it. You’re not even supposed to know you’re in a sim when you’re in it let alone be able to manipulate it. What was she going to call you?”

“I . . .” I can’t think of anything good. My mind’s gone blank. I look up at him and gape, feeling like a fish about to run out of oxygen. “Nothing,” I whisper instead.

“Traitor?”

He says it like a question but I still flinch. I don’t like that word. It feels so . . . dirty. I prefer rebel. Fighting against tyranny. It’s what the Americans were called when they fought against England all those centuries ago. Rebels. They didn’t fall in line with the status quo. Neither do I. But I guess history is what ultimately gives a person that title. Would Benedict Arnold still be a traitor if the British won? Probably, but only to the losers and history cares nothing for them.

“No one will believe you,” I say, cutting right to the chase. Fine. I’m done playing the game. Now it’s time to let my training take over. Four’s been a hard read since I met him and if he doesn’t stand on my side then he won’t stand at all. I’ll take him out at his knees if I have to.

“I don’t want them to believe me.”

A retort is on my lips before I fully process what he just said. At first it just pings around in my head, not getting any purchase. Then it just clicks and the only thing that rises to my lips is, “What?”

“You need help,” he says, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”

He’s insinuating. The last thing I want to do is make an assumption that blows me completely out of the water. “Do what alone?”

Four lowers himself in front of me, resting a hand on each arm rest, presumably trapping me into the seat. He’s seen me fight. He knows better than that. Still, I don’t make a move against him.

“Fight Erudite. New Dauntless training, new initiatives, some of the things I’ve seen . . . Jeanine’s planning something. Something major. I just don’t know what.”

All of my information floats to the top of my head, ready to be skimmed off and fed to the man in front of me. He knows me about as well as I know him: not really at all. But in reality we’ve been gauging each other this entire time. Little pieces of information, little tidbits. One outsider to another. And now he knows something that could get me killed. But how would he even know what to look for? Divergents are supposed to be non-issues. No one’s really supposed to know about them. Unless . . .

This time my frown isn’t one of fake confusion but real realization. “You too.”

I’m not speaking to fighting. I don’t have to elaborate. He knows exactly what I’m talking about and his head nods slowly, just a couple of bobs, his eyes still glaring into mine.

“You can’t do this alone.”

I bristle at the accusation. “I’ve been doing it alone for eight years.”

A smile just barely touches his lips. “Time to upgrade.”

“How do I know I can trust you? How do you know you can trust me?”

That smile grows up just a tick more. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t trust each other.”

He’s right. If either of us were truly in Dauntless hands, we would have handed the other right over. Narced each other right out. We didn’t. Instead we’re still sitting here, talking. Trading secrets. Plotting.”

“Let me know the next time you go for a run.”

I stiffen, my jaw clenching shut. Shit. If he knows, who else knows?

“No one else knows,” he says as if reading my mind. “No one knows nearly enough to put the pieces together.”

Is this really happening? Am I picking up a co-conspirator? All of a sudden the burden on my shoulders feels a little lighter. Maybe this is what I need. Help. So I don’t have to carry the success of the mission alone. I nod, acknowledging the next step. Our next first step in the fight together.

Four stands back up and looks toward the door. “He’s waiting out there. He tried to watch but I kicked him out. Figured you didn’t want him prying.”

I nod again as I push myself out of the chair.

“He’ll find out,” Four says and I turn back around to face him. “It’s only a matter of time. He is Erudite, after all.”

I give Four a small smile before reaching for the door. “So am I.”

The harsh light on the other side of the door nearly blinds me and I wince back against the brightness. No one waits for me on the other side and a small feeling of disappointment settles into my chest. If Eric was here he didn’t hang around. That’s okay. While I’m sure I look far better than when I came out of the sim, I still feel like my eyes are still swollen, my cheeks flushed red. And seeing him this close to having killed him in my head, I have no idea how I would react. Considering I seem to be breaking down left, right, and sideways, it’s probably for the best.

That thought doesn’t last very long as I smash into a heavily muscled chest when I round a corner. Eric barely moves, but I stumble back a few steps. His hands darts out to catch my arm and I brace against the wall. The man is a brick wall. My ears ring from the hit and a dull pain throbs in my forehead. Ouch.

I look up at him, rubbing my eyes for effect, and give him a crooked smile. “Watch where you’re going, huh?”

His head hanging limp on his broken neck flashes through my mind and I swallow back the image, refusing to let him see that pain in my eyes. He sees nothing except my momentary awkwardness and returns my smile.

“That’ll teach me not to walk and scroll at the same time,” he says, holding up his hand-held. “Got your sim results.”

Already? Damn. Four transmitted those quickly. I right myself and straighten my clothes. “Oh yeah?”

He looks down at the hand-held and taps against the screen a couple of times. “Six fears in fifteen minutes.” He looks up at me over the screen, his eyes hooded, his smile sly. “Jeanine did train you well.”

“You believe me now?” I say, mock irritation in my voice. Although, not sure how mock it is. I have been telling all of them that I’m perfectly capable of doing this. I feel like I need a shirt that says, ‘I Told You So.’

“Guess I don’t have a choice,” he says, the corner of his mouth crooking up.

“Glad I could force your hand,” I retort as I push past him using my inked up arm. My swollen, sensitive, inked up arm. I grind my teeth together and take a deep breath, swallowing the jolt of pain down.

“Bet that hurt,” he says and I can hear the smirk in his voice without having to turn around and see it. I could slap his lips clean off.

I throw up a hand, middle finger pointing straight up, and keep walking. “Bite me.”

In a matter of hard steps I feel Eric push himself up against me. In one fluid movement his hands slide around my hips and his face dips down to my neck. I feel his breath tickle my ear just before his teeth nip the sensitive skin just under it. Everything melts away with that one bite. It’s exactly what I needed after everything I just saw. Even though it wasn’t real it’s playing like a memory in my mind and his teeth on my skin remind me he’s not dead. Eric’s right here, holding me tight.

“You shouldn’t taunt me like that,” he breathes into my ear.

I spin around in his arms, paying my throbbing tattoo no mind. His hands find my ass and lift me off the ground as I wrap my legs around his waist. Air rushes out of me as my back hits the wall and I grab his chin, hold his face in front of mine, and study his lips. His eyes. My thumb finds his lip and he allows his mouth to fall open as I drag it down.

“Does this mean I’m finally in your little club?” My voice his taunting and breathy and I pulse with each press of his length against me. I squeeze my legs harder around him and he presses me harder into the wall.

This is dangerous. The hallway we’re in, it’s not a busy one, but people could still walk by. We could be found out. If I’m thinking it, so is he, and obviously neither of us care.

“Guess it does,” he says as he grabs the front of my shirt and jerks my face down to his, our lips pressing together.

We’re hungry for each other. I vaguely feel the crinkle of pain on my sore skin where my fresh ink sits, but it’s drowned out by our ravenous kiss. His hands wander over me, pressing into my most sensitive places, finding my hardened nipples even through layers of clothing. We can’t stay here. I can hide it, but Eric . . . He presses into me and I moan. He’d be screwed. Least of all by me.

Still I don’t stop his hand as it makes its way under my shirt, flesh on flesh, as he grabs a breast and starts massaging. He doesn’t stop my hand as it pops a button on his pants and slithers down, grabbing hold of him and giving him my own massage.

With my legs still wrapped around him he moves us away from a wall and just a few steps down the hallway where a closed door is pressed into my back. Eric grabs the knob, gives it a turn, and we fall into the room, only Eric holds me up. He leans against the door to close it and I hear his fingers fumble with the lock. All the while I hold his face to mine as we devour each other, tongues dancing in the darkness around us. The only light filters through the tempered glass in the door, inches thick and impossible for anyone on either side to see through. Even knowing that, what we’re about to do, so close to everyday life like this, I feel myself moisten even more.

I don’t know what he sets me down on, but it’s a shelf that can barely support my ass. He seems to realize this in a comically frustrating way that the table can barely support me. It takes him a second to strategize and just as I’m stepping forward, slipping off the shelf, he’s lifting me up, taking my mouth in his before turning me around and pushing me against the wall. 

His hands wander all over me, sliding across my stomach, up my chest, grabbing hold of my breasts while he nibbles at my neck. From behind he slides a hand down and unbuttons my pants before sliding a hand in, but it doesn’t linger. Just teases at my opening, slicking me up, before moving out to pull my pants down. I feel them pool around my ankles as I let my own hands take his pants the rest of the way off and let those join mine on the floor.

I press into him, rub my ass onto his cock, and listen to him moan. I can feel it through his chest, vibrating into my soul. His hand cups my sex and he breathes into my ear.

“You’re so fucking wet.” Teeth clench onto my ear and I shudder at his touch.

“Then do something about it already. Stop fucking around and fuck me.”

Eric needs no more invitation. My palms slap on the metal shelf as he bends me over and I arch myself into him, inviting him into me. His fingers play at my opening a few seconds longer, amping up my need. Then I feel his head against me, pushing into me, my body stretching to accommodate his shaft. Fuck, he feels so good. I slide myself against him, practically begging for more, and his fingers dig into my bare hips, clamping on for the ride.

At first his pumps are slow, finding a rhythm, teasing that deep spot within me with that makes me crave him more. Then he builds, driving deeper and deeper with each thrust.

I bite my tongue, trying to keep the noise to a minimum. As it is our bodies slapping against each other are noise enough, and it sounds like sonic booms in the quiet. Every other thrust I hear a little grunt escape Eric’s throat and one long growl as I clench myself around him, forcing him to pull out slowly.

Before I realize what’s happening he’s all the way out and spinning me around, pressing my ass onto the small shelf. At first I’m not sure how this is going to work, the sex lizard squirming across my brain and making me dumb. Everything’s pooled around my ankles and my boots are still on. How’s this going to work?

Until he ducks down and throws my legs over his shoulders, coming up through the loop. But he doesn’t stand up immediately. He stops at my thighs, his tongue running along the sensitive skin there. Teeth nipping at my flesh. He buries his face in my mound, digging his tongue into me, lapping at my sensitive folds, flicking at my clit that sends ripples through my body every single time.

But he doesn’t linger. He stands all the way up, my legs wrapped around his waist. I grab his cock and give him a couple of strokes. His hand finds my neck and he runs his thumb along my jaw. Our mouths find each other in the dim light and we devour, our tongues dancing, finding rhythm, matching beats. In this moment we are one so much even our heartbeats match, a staccato rhythm that never stops thudding.

I bring him to me and his fingers dig into my ass, helping me inch closer. As soon as his head’s pressed against my opening I dig my heels into his ass and urge him forward. He presses in to the hilt and I gasp, unable to keep the noise in. I press my nose into his neck, inhale his musky scent, the soap that forever lingers on his skin. I flick my tongue out and caress his throat and his hand finds the back of my head, his fingers digging into my hair.

Our foreheads touch and we stay like that as he thrusts. My hips match his movement push for push and I keep him pulled to me. I want him deep. As deep as he can go. Pressure builds with every plunge he takes into me and my sight speckles as my cunny starts to pulse. 

“I’m going to cum,” I whisper, gasp. I say it into his mouth, allowing him to swallow my words.

He holds on tighter, one arm around my shoulder, the other hand cradling my ass, helping me fuck him. I ride his cock to the crest, the world stopping in a flash of a moment before it explodes open in front of me. I lower my head and bite onto his shoulder to keep my screams contained and he keeps pumping as the orgasm rides through me, pushing each pulse out in one rolling wave of ecstasy after another.

Within seconds Eric goes tense and he wraps his arms around me, holding me tight as he finishes, his body convulsing over me, his breaths short and gasping in my ear. 

We stay like that for a moment, holding each other, two parts of a whole, while we come down from our high. Sweat glistens on my skin and I can feel it trickling down Eric’s face, splashing onto my shoulder. He pulls away and I think he’s going to duck right out from between my legs. Instead he leans back, his hands cupping my face. His eyes study me, roving over the planes of my cheeks, glimpsing my lips, staring into my eyes. 

He leans into me and our lips meet, the kiss tender but full of need as we both stand there naked from the waste down Like a freight train the pain from my fresh ink comes throbbing back into my life and it takes everything in me not to grunt in pain. I didn’t feel any of the touching, pulling, pressing, gripping when it was happening. Now I feel every poke as if it’s happening all over again. I hope nothing got messed up. And I hope there’s enough aspirin to stop this god-awful pain.

As if sensing my discomfort Eric smirks. “So when do I get to see your new tat?”

I shove him in the chest and then he does duck from between my legs, allowing me the leverage to pull my clothes back on while he does the same. Ugh, I crave him. I just had him and I already want more. What is wrong with me?

“When it’s not all swollen and scabbed over,” I say, buttoning the last button on my pants. 

Eric chuckles. “You know that could take weeks.”

I smirk back at him. “Then I guess we keep fucking with my shirt on then, huh?”

He shrugs. “Or you can stop being stubborn.”

“You obviously don’t know me very well.”

“Problem easily solved.” The smile he gives me is something small, something secret, but it’s all for me. That one moment in time is his gift and I seize it. I want to remember it, because we’ll only have these moments behind closed doors and it kills me. Fucking Jeanine.

I shake my head as he walks to the door and just as he touches his fingers to the knob I turn to him and say, “And Eric?”

He says nothing as he turns to face me.

“If you’re ever a raging dick to me in public again I’ll staple your tongue to your forehead.”

A smile plays on my face, but I’m also serious. He’s a smart guy. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. His overcompensation. He can’t keep doing it.

He laughs at that, the smile reaching his eyes, as he turns the knob and walks out the door, closing it behind him. I wait a few minutes to collect myself, to calm myself down, get some strength back into the jelly my kneecaps have turned into. Do I have the same effect on him? I must or he wouldn’t jump me like this.

Or it’s all a test. Like my entire life. Lure me in and then break me in half. God, I really hope it’s not that.

I let myself out of the room and close the door behind me.


	22. 22

I feel like I’m going to throw up. I shouldn’t be this nervous, but I am. I’ve kept my secret for so long, and despite the slight weight off of my shoulders in sharing it with someone, fear weighs me back down. I’m seeing tests everywhere. In Eric. In Four. In my very paranoia. It would not surprise me if that were Jeanine’s game. That she’s known all along about my Divergence and she’s constructed this elaborate rouse to draw me out.

Or I’m thinking way to highly of myself. She’s had zero reason to distrust me. I’ve passed every test she’s ever put me through. I’ve passed all of Dauntless’s tests. I have no reason to be afraid, yet every reason to be. The second I become too confident is the second I fall. But I can’t let paranoia eat at me either. I have to patch up the cracks in my armor before anyone sees them. At least anyone who isn’t sympathetic to me. Someone who isn’t Four.

Flurries flutter around my head and my breath crystalizes in front of me every time I breathe. Winter’s firmly settled over the ruins of Chicago, but that doesn’t stop Dauntless. What’s a little snow? A little ice? Except another challenge to overcome. Fuck, I hate the cold.

And I hate it even more standing on an exposed platform by myself as I wait for Four to show up. If he shows up. No, I can’t think like that. I can’t get inside my own head like that. I’ll only end up ruining myself and I didn’t come this far just to shoot myself in the foot.

It’s two in the morning and pitch black in the city. Disintegrating buildings cast black shadows against a cloudy sky. Snowflakes stick to my eyelashes and I bury my face farther into the scarf wrapped around my head. Even in a winter “run” I’d need to bundle up. No, my bundling up isn’t the conspicuous thing right now. How the hell would I explain a run in the middle of the night if I were to be caught? Couldn’t sleep? Right.

A shush of shifting snow is all that alerts me to the presence of someone else on the platform and I immediately turn toward the noise. His body barely casts an outline in the darkness, but I know his shape by now. We wear matching hats, Dauntless black, but he doesn’t have a scarf. Even in the dark I can see his noise stained red from the cold. He told me he’s taking me to his contact. That we can bring this all together to create a more centralized resistance. Or he’s handing me right over to Dauntless hands.

Stop. Stop thinking like that.

“You’re early,” he says as he walks up to me, slightly out of breath. I’d otherwise judge him, but the cold will rob air from even the healthiest lungs. Mine burned just walking up the stairs.

I tap on the screen of my watch to light up the face. It’s two minutes past. “You’re late,” I reply and look back up at him.

“We got another couple minutes before the train wings back around. I sent word ahead. Your contact should be there too.”

I whip my head around to face him, his profile carving out the night. “Tell me you didn’t put my name to paper.”

The look he gives me is withering and he rolls his eyes away from me. “If this is going to work you need to start trusting me.”

“I need to survive to see tomorrow. You don’t know Jeanine. Not like I do. Just a whiff of any of this and she’d put my head on a spike outside of Erudite’s doors.”

“Have you ever been to any of the Factionless buildings? Actually in them?”

Four’s abrupt change in conversation throws me for a loop. For a second I can’t find the words to respond, but they eventually come to me. “No. I couldn’t risk being seen by so many people. Too many people who know a secret only increases the chances of it not being a secret anymore.”

“Have you ever talked to any of them, aside from your contact? About their lives, I mean?”

I shake my head only to realize not only is he not looking at me, but he probably can’t see all that great in the dark. “No. Never any time.”

He sighs, this big exhale that forms a cloud in front of his face that lingers for a second before disappearing into the winter night. “It’s more than just their heads that are at risk. It’s their survival. Their right to live.”

“I know—“

“Do you?” His words cut across mine like a knife as he turns to me. “You know of them. You help them because they’ll help you with your own end game. They’re tools to use.”

Indignation flairs thick in my throat. “They are not—“

“Just stop,” he says and heat flushes my neck. Embarrassment, guilt, shame. All of it piles on as he lays bare what I’ve been doing.

I've wanted to lay waste to Jeanine's finely crafted plans since I found out I was Divergent. I would never let her destroy me. When I stumbled upon the underground movement I found the greatest tool at my disposal: the Factionless. It was hard enough to seek out and convert other Divergents to own their own freakish mind let alone to rise up against our own demented government. The Factionless were all too willing to fill that gap. And I let them without a second thought. Why would I think about it? My problem had a solution. It's pure logic.

Using humans in an incredibly dangerous game of chess. What if it was something I set in motion that caused the raid that brought in the man I tortured? The one where his daughter was killed right in front of him?

I thought about my future, a life where I could breathe without being afraid. But I never really thought about what it would cost for everyone other than me. I was too busy focusing on Jeanine.

"Train's coming." Four motions toward the distance and I see the flickering lights of the train approaching. I want to say something to fill the silence as we wait, but it doesn't feel like anything's sufficient enough.

We board in silence, running and jumping onto the slowing train as if merely stepping onto a stair. Now it’s ingrained in both of us. Despite how much neither of us wants to fit in we’ve both conformed perfectly.

The Factionless area we’re heading to is on the other side of the city, where our world is darkest. It’s a neutral zone that only Dauntless venture into when they’re feeling bored and looking to start a fight. The first ten minutes of the ride nothing but clacking train wheels on tracks keeps us company. Then, just when I can’t take the silence anymore, Four speaks.

“Let me do the talking,” he says. “I have a better rapport with them.”

“Because I can’t speak for myself?”

“Can you not sound like you just walked out of the Erudite compound? And you look like you’re pure Dauntless. You trained among their homes. They know who you are. You scare the shit out of them.”

I shift uncomfortably under his gaze, my clothes all of a sudden becoming constricting. As if I’m being choked. I tug the scarf away from my face so I can breath a little better. The cold air hits the heat on my face and I nearly sigh in relief.

“Emmanuel was never afraid of me,” I mumble more to myself than Four.

“There’s more to the Factionless than Emmanuel. Just follow my lead.”

“How about you do me a favor and stop treating me like a child about to go to dinner for the first time? I can comport myself just fine without your instruction.”

His tone was like nails on a chalk board and in that moment I hated every word that came out of his mouth. I didn’t want to admit that he was right. That I really didn’t know how to talk to any of them. I may have been bucking my society, but it was still firmly ingrained in me and it was a damn hard habit to kick. I work with Emmanuel just fine. We each serve a purpose to the other. But whatever’s about to happen now? Politicking? I’m sure I could handle it, but probably not in any way that would appease the rejected masses. All I know is Jeanine and Dauntless. Not exactly a matching palette.

“I’m trying to make sure everything goes right. We have a common goal, but . . .” His voice trails off and he looks out the black window, seeing nothing but the light overhead reflected in the glass. “They’re volatile. Anxious. It won’t take much to set them off and that’s not what we need right now.”

I frown and he looks back over at me. “When did you become a Factionless ambassador?”

He blinks, but doesn’t say a word. For a few beats too long I keep expecting him to say something, but silence hangs thick between us. He looks away and the silence remains until he pulls himself to his feet and announces that this is where we’re getting off.

I can’t see anything beyond the windows so I jump when he jumps and hope for the best. Grass comes up to meet me and I hit the ground rolling, barely feeling the impact as I pull myself to my feet.

“Right on time.”

Within a second I process the voice as not Four’s and I lash out, grabbing the shirt of the person standing far too close to me for my liking. Swears tumble out of a man’s mouth as he struggles against my grip. A light flashes on and I blink back the sting of brightness.

“Let him go.”

The light lowers and I see Four’s face behind it. I look to the man in my choke hold, his face a deep shade of red, and I let go. He takes a heaping gasp of a breath and stumbles away from me rubbing his neck.

“Crazy bitch,” he mumbles between heaves.

Before I can get a retort out, Four does it for me. “Don’t sneak up on a Dauntless. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

Whoever these people are, Four knows them. And judging by the frustration in his voice he’s had to teach them a few lessons multiple times. 

“What do you want?” The other man says as he lingers near his companion, watching him as he gasps for air before turning to look at Four. “A welcome sign?”

“Not hanging out in the dark and sneaking up on us would be a good start,” Four says as he makes his way between the two.

I follow closely behind, not wanting to linger by these two men for long. I don’t know whether they have a pride thing they’re going to want to rectify or what, but I figure it’s not good for diplomacy to pound the crap out of one of the people we’re supposed to be working with.

I can tell the building we’re walking toward is little more than a shell even in the dark of night. At least that’s what it looks like until we get closer to it. Then I see it’s so much more than that. The facade is deceiving, crumbling pieces of building left to litter around its skeleton. But I can see low light fluttering through black spaces. The windows are covered. Blacked out.

Four pulls open a door and its metal hinges squeal into the relative silence around us. Grass and gravel crunch behind us as the two men make their way over. I note they keep a healthy distance. That’s probably for the best.

On the other side of that door is a world of bustle that brings me up short. It’s a hive of people buzzing around, even at this late hour. Climbing up one wall are sleeping cubbies, only half of them dark. I imagine only the heartiest sleepers can manage through the racket. Everyone else is messing about on the floor, carting steel, smithing iron. Welding? Sparks light up from a passing torch and I wince back, afraid for my eyes and my skin.

“No rest for the wicked,” Four says as he looks back to me, a sly smile on his face.

I guess not. We’re here, aren’t we? We’re as wicked as they come, faction traitors and all.

We climb a set of rickety wooden stairs and Four knocks on a frosted window. It’s a second before someone calls from inside to beckon us and I follow him in. I immediately recognize Emmanuel and I nearly smile in greeting until my brain remembers that nothing we’ve met about renders a smile. Instead I give him a silent nod and he gives me one in return.

Next to him is a petite woman who looks vaguely familiar. I can’t help but stare at her face for an uncomfortably long time until she gives me a small little smile that I swear I just saw somewhere else.

“Trying to place me?” she says and I frown. “Try Abnegation.”

Like a boot to the teeth it hits me and I nearly gasp. Then I look to Four and see the ghost of the smile he just gave me on the face of the woman in front of us. My god, it’s Evelyn Eaton.

“You’re not dead,” I say dumbly and I’m too shocked to even hate the words out of my mouth.

When she smiles the corners of her eyes crinkle, but there’s no light there in them. It’s a calculating, patronizing look that I immediately dislike. “Evelyn Eaton is dead. I,” she says and lifts her arms as if to showcase herself. “Am no longer her.”

I’m missing something. There’s a gap here I can’t seem to cross. “Marcus, does he know?”

Evelyn shrugs. “Evelyn’s dead to him too. Has been for years.” She sticks her hands in her pockets and Emmanuel shifts from foot to foot behind her.

So if Marcus thinks she’s actually dead, it means she faked her own death. Marcus wasn’t in on this. Not as a faction leader. He would never go for this kind of subterfuge. But that also means she left Four, Tobias, behind. I turn to him.

“How long have you known?” I ask him, sheer curiosity in my voice. This is turning out to be even bigger than I thought.

“A couple years.”

So recently. Evelyn ditched out on her son and left him with an abusive father? I immediately don’t like this woman, yet Four brought me right to her. So he must trust her to some extent, at least on a rebellion level, if not on a personal one.

“We appreciate the information you’ve given us, Madeline,” Evelyn says as she nods back an acknowledgement to Emmanuel. “It’s helped us immensely.”

“But not enough,” I say, filling in the barely there gap she’s leaving.

“Do you have names for the latest raid on our quarters?” Emmanuel asks and I can only shake my head. “No. Not enough.”

“What I found,” I say, speaking just a hint too quickly, something that makes my cheeks burn, as if I’m eager to appease these people, “didn’t have the names of those who went on the raid. I couldn’t even see faces. I’d have to study voices to really pick anyone out and even then it would be difficult to filter the ambient noise.”

Emmanuel rolls his eyes. As if I haven’t put myself on the line for him, for all of this, for years. As if what I’ve done, what I’ve been doing, is inconsequential. The information I have given him has helped them avoid many raids, helped them set up an underground network for Divergents trying to escape the factions. Those who can’t assimilate into society knowing what they are. But no. It’s not enough.

“A caravan will be transporting arms from Erudite to Dauntless, including some of their latest technology. I don’t think I need to explain what any of it is for.”

“I hear there are dinosaurs on the other side of the fence.” I can’t help it. My opinion of Emmanuel has decreased and Evelyn occupies the corner of the last page in my book. This is supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Now I can feel it shifting. I can feel myself becoming a tool and it makes my hackles rise. 

“I need the two of you to work with us to commandeer the cargo.”

“Work with you,” Four says, his tone deadpan. His head begins to shake. “You know we can’t be in the open.”

I can hear it in his words even without him saying it: you’re putting your son in a hell of a lot of danger. I can’t help but scoff at the insinuation.

“We’ll get you all the information you need to make sure you’re positioned right where you need to be—“

“We already have all the information,” Emmanuel says, his face blank. “We need trained muscle.”

“No,” I say without hesitation. “Not a chance. It could blow everything.”

“Continuing liaisons with you could blow everything,” Evelyn counters as she walks toward me. I cross my arms over my chest and stand up straighter. “It’s time to put your talk to action.”

I laugh, a raucous belly laugh that echoes around the walls of the ramshackle office. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I look to Four, point at his mother, and continue chuckling. “ _You_ want _me_ to prove _my_ allegiance?”

Evelyn looks almost impatient, her face settling into something impassive, as if she’s dealing with an errant child. “Let me put it another way,” she says calmly. “You do what we need you to do or I’ll make sure my other Dauntless contacts are aware of the mole in their faction and Jeanine makes you, and your boyfriend, disappear.”

“Evelyn, what the hell?” Four says. No Mom. Evelyn.

“Tobias,” she says as she walks closer to him, her back to me. She reaches her hand out to cup his cheek and he slaps it away, the look on his face riddled with disgust. “I have hundreds of people counting on me to be a success. I would be a failure of a leader if I didn’t have contingencies in place.”

Four nods and sucks on his teeth before looking back at his mother. “Well, you’re already a failure of a mother so you have to make it up somewhere, right? We’re done here.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” I mutter as I follow Four out of the office.

“We’ll send someone with details,” Evelyn tells our backs, but neither of us acknowledge her.

We power through the Factionless fortress and out into the night, saying nothing to each other. What’s there to say? Our feet are to the fire. Help the Factionless shanghai Dauntless weapons or we’re both dead. Like I need another bitch threatening my life right now.


	23. 23

I’m back where I started, sitting in front of Jeanine’s desk as she drones on about something. Except instead of Erudite blue I’m in Dauntless black. Bags hang heavy under my eyes and it takes everything in me not to yawn in her face. God, the things she’d do to me if I did that. And instead of waiting to be picked up, I’m here with Eric and Max, the innermost inner circle.

“I want to test one of the pieces of new tech,” Jeanine says as her eyes shift from face to face. “I think we’re closer than we originally anticipated in completing it.”

My skin prickles and I keep my breathing even. There was supposed to be more time. I force my hands to remain still, folded in my lap. Not fidgeting. Not showing any outward emotion. I’d kill myself if I were to give anything away now. Save everyone else the trouble.

Jeanine does that thing where she lets her words hang in the air, not necessarily waiting for someone to fill the silence after her. Just waiting. Letting the space between words grow increasingly uncomfortable. I’ve learned to be completely comfortable in silence and she should know that. Eric and Max? Eric, I think, can poker face it. Max would probably be the most emotive out of all of us. Sure enough, when I turn to look at him his knee is bobbing.

“Follow me.” The smile she gives us is about as warm as a snow bank and is so far from her eyes it might as well be on her heels.

The three of us get up and follow her out of her office, over to the bank of elevators, and we wait in silence for the doors to open. Once we step into the metallic little box Jeanine continues speaking as she inserts a card into a reader and presses a basement level button. I’m incredibly familiar with those floors and I flush thinking about revisiting them. Where I learned to become this woman’s perfect little soldier. What has she done to my training ground?

“I’ve put engineers and programmers on the project twenty-four seven trying to complete it. People are motivated when our safety and survival are at stake. What’s some lost sleep when we’re at risk of collapse thanks to Abnegation and their harbored Divergents?”

The woman sounds like a loon, but I only nod in agreement. When the elevator stops it lurches us and Eric presses into me, his hand on my hip. The contact only lasts a second, and a second too long, before his touch is gone and we’re walking out of the elevator. Now I flush for a completely different reason. I wouldn’t think him to have such deviance in him, to even feign that kind of contact when Jeanine’s so close. Whether or not she’d make anything of it, I have no idea. But the woman had foresight enough to warn us away from each other. What he did was dangerous, for she was bound to pick up on any kind of intimate contact between us, no matter how small. She’s too perceptive to things not going her way not to be.

Luckily there are no reflective surfaces around us, and the door was opening when it happened, Jeanine’s eyes looking down the hall in front of us. At least he knew what he was doing there. Still, I could slap him. And kiss him.

Our steps echo hollowly in the sterile halls as I try to hide my flashbacks. Every light, every door brings with it some kind of memory. Some brutal image of historical documents, training, fighting, just trying to stay alive. This was home for years. Now I can’t wait to get out. 

She walks through a set of double doors and the three of us follow her, the doors whooshing shut behind us. We’re headed to one of the training rooms. The one with all the weapons, but older weapons. More rudimentary things used before the world went to hell. My eyes narrow involuntarily. If she looked at me just then I would blame it on the brightness, on a headache. But I’m really wondering what I’m about to see through the doors we’re walking toward.

The room we walk into is just as bright and some weapons remain on one wall. Rusty axes, guns that no longer fire, swords that no one in their right mind would use now. But on the other side is something entirely new. And entirely horrifying.

Heavy steel cells line one wall of the room, and all of them are occupied. It’s impossible to say how long any of them have been in there, but as we walk up on them I see how battered they are. How tattered their clothes are. How bloody. Men and women, young and old, each in their own cell. A dozen in all. My stomach roils and it’s all I can do not to outright gag.

Off to the side is a table with a bunch of instruments on it. Jeanine walks over to it and picks something up, flicking it on. I watch it light up and it casts a blue sheen onto Jeanine’s angular face. When she turns around I hide a gasp.

The thing has claws, as if it latches onto something. On the other side is a screen that she’s fiddling with, tapping with her finger as if inputting information. She casually glances up at us and a smirk ticks up her lips. Her eyes hop from one face to another and the three of us must stare at this thing, wondering what the hell it is.

“It’s exterior is still rudimentary,” she says, twisting the contraption around as if to show us all sides. “But I think it’s important to get the technology correct first and then we can worry about aesthetics later, don’t you think?”

“Is that the scanner?” Max asks and my eyes bolt to him.

He has a slight frown on his face, but he doesn’t look as horrified as I feel right now.

“It is,” she replies and she motions toward the cells.

“Eric, open that one.” She points to a cell with a quivering woman in it and I expect her to hand him a key or something. Instead he walks right over to the cell door, presses his fingers into the pad, and stands aside as the door pops open.

The woman squeals and I hear him mutter “shut up” as he steps into the cell. She scuttles away from him, pressing herself into the bars in the corner. She’s begging, pleading, crying out no. But he doesn’t hear her. In fact he looks annoyed that he has to put up with her noise. The woman cries out when he grabs her arm and she tries to dig her heels into the smooth tile floor when he starts dragging her out. Of course it does nothing.

When he walks back over to us he whips her around and throws her at our feet.

He nods down to her, a sneer on his face. As if she’s a piece of trash. I try telling myself this is the mask, but that voice is incredibly quiet. It’s getting harder to see where the mask ends and Eric begins. “Do we actually know she’s Divergent? To verify whether the scanner works?”

Jeanine looks down her nose at the quivering lump of woman at her feet. “She hasn’t come out and said it, of course. But we do know she had an error on her test. All the other errors we’ve found have turned out to be Divergent. Odds are she is as well.”

She taps a few more times on the screen on the scanner before walking closer to the woman. “Hold her head, Eric. This thing’s still pretty primitive.”

My eyes flick back to Eric and he looks back down at the woman as he fists her hair, strands weaving through his fingers as he yanks her head back. She screams and reaches up for his hand, but he doesn’t relent. She still moves in his grip so he wraps his other hand around her head and grabs onto her chin while pulling her into him, anchoring her into his muscle. My heart hammers in my chest and a knot forms in my throat, but I keep my exterior calm. Collected. Made of stone.

It’s what Jeanine made me.

She steps up to the woman and places the clawed side of the scanner against the woman’s face. Over her eyes. The woman’s sobs are thick and sloppy and she screeches when Jeanine flicks a switch and I watch the claw grab hold. It doesn’t appear to dig in too much, but enough to pierce skin. Enough to leave a mark. I watch as blood wells around one of the anchors and trails down the woman’s cheek. I rub my hand against my nose, hoping to push back my disgust. Neither Jeanine nor Eric are paying attention to me, and Max only has eyes for the display in front of him. For the moment I’m safe.

The woman sobs in Eric’s arms, tears mixing with blood as it makes its way down her cheeks. I rest my face in my hand, my hand over my mouth, my elbow digging into my side. Her eyes are clenched shut and the screen facing Jeanine keeps flashing.

“She needs to open her eyes,” Jeanine says, her voice calm and cold. She could have been talking about the weather for all the tone her voice held.

Instead of yanking or holding her harder, Eric lowers his lips to her ear and whispers something to her. Her sobs go silent but her body wracks with emotion. Slowly her eyelids peel apart and she looks up to the contraption in front of her. Jeanine hits a button, a bright light flashes and the anchors release. Jeanine doesn’t acknowledge the woman who falls back into Eric’s arms, whom he lets drop down onto the floor as he steps away from her. She only has eyes for the screen.

“Fifty-three percent Divergent. It fits with her test results.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of effort for a scanner,” Eric says as he straightens his jacket. “There has to be a better way.”

Jeanine powers down the scanner, its anchors still slick with the woman’s blood, and looks up at Eric with a thin-lipped smile. “That’s why I have the engineers working on it. The software is where it needs to be, with only slight improvements needed. They need to get the hardware to match up.”

She waves away the woman on the floor and as if from out of the shadows two people come out and carry her back over to her cell. The woman doesn’t fight. She only cradles her face in her hands and weeps.

“Hey. Hey! Don’t leave me here!”

We’ve barely turned to leave my former training room-turned-torture chamber when a voice from one of the other cells calls to us. I step to the side and look around Max and Jeanine to see someone in Dauntless black toward the end of the row of cells.

“C’mon! You got the wrong person!”

“Who is that?” I ask no one in particular.

Jeanine pulls up her hand-held and taps the screen a few times. “This says his name is Michael.” As if the machine could be lying to her. Or she doesn’t care to associate the name to a human being. “Dauntless transfer from Amity two years ago. Same error on his test as that one,” she says, pointing to the sobbing woman heaped in the corner of her cell.

“My results were Dauntless!” he screeches as he tries to rattle the bars of his cage. They don’t budge.

Jeanine taps off her hand-held and lets it fall to her side. “A Divergent is a Divergent regardless of where they come from. I want to make sure our equipment works across all spectrums of people.”

Jeanine’s heels tap on the floor as she walks out of the room. Max and Eric readily follow her. I leave myself a couple steps behind. I glance back over my shoulder and the man, Michael, throws himself at the bars again.

“Don’t leave me down here!”

I avert my eyes. Drop my gaze down to my shoes, and walk out behind my counterparts. My stomach cramps, a pain that nearly takes my breath away. I swallow hard and pull myself up straight before anyone else can notice me slumping. By the time Jeanine, Max, and Eric get another look at me, I’m the same as always. Impassive, stone cold, a soldier.

They’re waiting for the elevator and as I walk up to Eric he looks down at me, his face unreadable. I meet his gaze, stare for stare, and his eyes don’t move from mine. They don’t rove over my face, they don’t travel up and down my body. Eyes hold eyes and I don’t know what to make of it.

The elevator dings and Jeanine’s walking through the door before it’s barely open and I have a feeling we break our stare a nanosecond too late. When I look up she’s already turned, landing us in her peripheral. She’s looking down, pressing a button, but the woman sees all. I fight back the heat that crawls up my neck and step into the elevator after her.

Doors are closing before I’ve turned around and I make sure to tuck myself at the back of the box. The urge to lean against the wall is overwhelming. I’m not sure I can even keep myself up anymore. But I do. Somehow I do it. But the strength I dig up doesn’t last long.

“Kai’s been coming by more often lately,” Jeanine says, a casual mention of my festering nemesis. Why the woman’s my nemesis I still have no idea, but the fact that she’s forcing time with Jeanine can’t be good. For her or for me.

When no one says anything she keeps talking. “She’s not impressed with you, Madeline.”

A pregnant pause fills the space between us and I think Jeanine’s actually waiting for me to say something. So I do.

“Oh?”

She hums in response. “I see through it, of course. She doesn’t think much of me if she believes pulling someone else down will make her look better by comparison.”

“Indeed,” I respond. No way am I adding fuel to this fire.

The elevator dings and the door opens into the lobby of Erudite headquarters. Eric and Max file out, leaving me and Jeanine in the box. The doors start to close and her arm snaps out, stopping it and pushing it back open. She turns to me then, a small smirk twitching up her lip.

“Still, she’s adamant you’re overcompensating for something. Her story, at least, doesn’t change.”

I don’t want to know the details of that story. I don’t want to face the lies, or the truths, that Kai’s flinging around about me. I have enough on my plate without having to deal with her gossip.

“She’s been at my throat from the beginning. Some misguided notion of competition,” I say, partially rolling my eyes for effect. “I don’t pretend to know what’s going on in her head. I have better things to do with my time.”

She gives me a little _hmm_ before motioning me out of the elevator with a slight nod of her head. Having my back to Jeanine is a dangerous thing, but I’d like to think she won’t try anything out in the open like this. Then again she is planning to overthrow Abnegation all out in the open. But she’s not signing her name to that. Not publicly, anyway.

Clacking heels let me know to turn around, that Jeanine’s followed me out of the elevator and is coming up behind me. 

“Regardless,” she says, her smirk turning into a sneer. “It’s best not to anger your counterparts too much. You wouldn’t want them impossible to work with.”

She knows something. I just don’t know what or how much. What the hell did Kai tell her? Fuck, am I going to have to threaten the woman now? And will she run crying to Jeanine if I did? Would Jeanine even believe her? That’s never been my thing before. Maybe I should just disappear her. Sure, all signs would point to me, but who would actually tango with me after that? And I doubt Jeanine would actually do anything to me for getting rid of someone who’s obviously an annoyance to her. Even if that annoyance is feeding her something. Ugh.

I clasp my hands behind my back, a habit I’m beginning to pick up from Eric, apparently. “With all due respect, ma’am, my existence angers her. Not sure how to avoid that.”

The smile she gives me is patronizing and falls far short of reaching her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Great. I don’t say anything to that. I just nod, turn around, and head out the door, not waiting to see if Eric and Max follow me. I assume they do, based on the heavy booted footfalls bringing up my rear. We pile in the car and as soon as the doors close I don’t hesitate.

“Permission to slit Kai’s throat in her sleep.”

“Denied,” Max says, a trace of humor in his voice. “For all her shortcomings she is useful.”

“She’s a nuisance,” Eric chimes in from the back. “There are plenty of people who are just as useful that stay out of the way.”

Max looks at Eric in the rearview mirror and then looks over to me before turning his eyes out the windshield. 

“I’m guessing,” Max says as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “She’s seeing an inch in a situation and taking a mile. Don’t give her anything. Not a damn thing. And maybe she’ll go away on her own.”

“Or maybe she’ll keep digging deeper,” I say.

Max turns his eyes to me for a brief second. “Don’t give her a reason to.”

With one last look in the rearview mirror, a hearty pause as he stares at Eric, he turns his gaze back to the road and drives us back home. I catch Eric’s eyes in my side view mirror and we stare at each other for a moment. An interminable moment, before looking away.

Shit.


	24. 24

I’ve been staring at my computer screen for hours. I’m pretty sure the blue glow has imbedded itself in my skin. When I look up I realize I’m sitting in a dark apartment, the sky black as pitch. When I was last aware of my surroundings it was late afternoon.

Four gave me some backdoor entry codes to get into Max’s hard drive without having to physically be in his office. It requires a take-over of the computer so I at least need to know his schedule. If he sees his pointer moving and he’s not doing it, he’ll know something’s up. Luckily I know Max is out tonight and I’ve been combing through files. 

I’ve trained my memory over the years to retain as much as possible. It’s not photographic, but I remember a lot more than the average person. There have been times people thought I could read minds. Instead I just remember the more insignificant conversations, the subtle cues that most would just file away and forget. I’m using my magnet of a memory now going through the raid videos and torture write-ups, looking for names and faces I can attach to names. Looking for shipment information, potential raid information, detail schedules, as much information as I can get in order to save my and Four’s asses when we’re with the Factionless.

I place the laptop on the table and walk over to a lamp and turn it on. I blink back at the brightness and let my world flood with light. A knock jolts me again and I rub my fingers into my temple, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. I walk over to the door and open it half-expecting the person on the other side and cursing myself for not walking back over to the table first.

Eric stands there with his arms crossed in front of his chest and my heart thuds. For him. For my open laptop on the table behind me showing Max’s computer screen. I have no idea whether Eric would recognize what’s on the screen with a glimpse, but it would only take a second of skimming to know what I’m looking at. No doubt he’d ask questions and I don’t want to answer them.

But I can’t turn him away. That would be suspicious. So I step aside and motion for him to come in. I quickly look both ways down the hallway before closing the door after him, making sure no one is nosing around. Although Kai’s getting eyes in more and more places and it’s pissing me off.

“You weren’t at the finals this morning. I figured you would be,” he says as he sits in the chair next to the table, looking sidelong at the laptop. At least he can’t see the screen.

I shrug. “Didn’t feel like it.”

He smirks. “You know your involvement with the recruits is mandatory. Besides, a lot of your transfers made the cut.”

I smile back at him and walk over to him. “Doesn’t feel mandatory.” And it doesn’t. I know Max wants me involved, and I have been. But only to a certain extent. I’m not up their asses and he doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. Bigger fish to fry and all that. “But some didn’t make it. I didn’t want to be there for that.”

I sit in the chair catty corner to him, drawing his eyes away from the computer and onto me. I watch him frown.

“You need to separate yourself from them. You can’t get attached.”

“Easier said than done,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “At least if I’m not there they can’t see me flinch.”

“We also initiated Phase Two.”

Shit. That I might hear about from Max. I should have been there for that. I don’t know what would have been harder: watching some of my recruits get ejected from the faction or watching the inductees getting implanted with the mind control chip. Fucking Jeanine. Phase One was meant to weed out the weak and recruit only those strong enough to survive and pliable enough to go along with any orders they were given. Phase Two is injecting those new recruits with a programming device controlled by Jeanine at Erudite headquarters. Once the program is activated it plunges the person’s conscious into a sim, allowing the program to gain control of the body and function to its desired needs. Because even Jeanine knows there aren’t enough people in Chicago to willingly slaughter innocent lives. She needs a program for that.

I look down at my hands and pick at the dry skin on my calloused palms. “Forgot about that. I’ll go to Max first thing.” And I mean it. I don’t have a choice.

The fabric on Eric’c chair squeaks and I look up to see him reaching for my laptop. I’m on my feet as he’s bringing it toward him and I see him eying the screen.

“What’s this?” he asks, the computer’s glow reflecting off his face.

I reach for it and he jerks it out of my reach. Lucky for me he’s the one sitting so I only need one more step before I snatch it out of his hands, but the clenching in my gut tells me he saw something on the screen.

“This is me getting pissed you’re trying to go through my laptop.” I close it and try to hide the anger at myself. I don’t want to blow it out of proportion. That’s not me. But I don’t know what else to say.

“You know you don’t have to hide anything from me.”

His voice thrums down into my bones and I take a deep breath as I tuck the computer in my nightstand. I turn back around and look at the back of his head, watch him scratch his face. He doesn’t turn around to look at me even though I know he can feel my gaze.

“Do I?” I say as I walk back over to him.

I stand next to the chair he’s in, hovering over him as he looks up to me, his blue eyes shining. With a lightning-fast move he grabs my wrist and jerks me down onto his lap, settling me in his arms. One hand rests on my thigh while his other hand rubs circles on my inked shoulder.

“You think I’ve told anyone what I’ve told you about me?”

I stare into his eyes, watch his features soften. There’s no mask there. Now that I know the difference, I know when he’s wearing it. When he’s public Eric made of stone and ready to kill at the mere mention of an order, or when he’s private Eric, the actual human being coping with his circumstances.

I feel flayed raw, open and bare to him. It hurts as much as it helps. “How do I know this isn’t another test? That Jeanine’s trying to get inside my head through you?”

His hand grips my thigh as he scoffs and gives a little indignant laugh. “You’re way too paranoid.”

“Am I? I say, searching his face. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“You’re right,” he says, nodding. “And that means she’s not in my head as much as yours.”

I look down at his hands and I grab the one on my thigh. I turn it over and run my fingers across his palm, calloused and dry. The hands of a soldier who’s had to use them far too often. He flexes his fingers around mine and I can’t take my eyes off of his hand.

“How much blood is on these hands?” I ask him.

Underneath me he inhales a giant breath and lets it out in a slow release. “Enough.”

“How does it not bother you?” I say and look up to his face. “How do you do everything Jeanine tells you without blinking?”

He’s already staring at me, watching my every move. I feel exposed in his stare, but I can’t look away. “Who says I don’t blink?” A small smile curls up his lips. “No one sees it. I don’t allow it. I can just tuck it all away, separate from the rest of me. It doesn’t bother me there.”

A sign of psychopathy. Compartmentalization. But he’s telling me it does bother him, if he allows it to. He’s burying himself under his own storage of blood. How much longer before he’s buried alive?

He threads his fingers around my neck and pulls me to him, lips to lips. Our kiss is gentle, soft, caring even. He moves his hand up my arm, resting it on my shoulder and I feel him smile under me.

“Can I see it yet?”

From slaughter to tattoos, the conversation changes in little more than a blink. This is how it doesn’t bother him. Divert. Ignore, Lock it up and throw away the key. He’s going to explode eventually.

I sit up and stare down at him, an indignant look on my face. I roll my eyes and slouch back, heaving an exaggerated sigh.

“Fine. I guess it’s healed _enough_.”

I pull my shirt off, not feeling an ounce of embarrassment as I sit on his lap in my bra. Especially since he doesn't have eyes for my tits. Instead he leans in closer to look at the ink. At the iridescent shimmer flickering across my skin thanks to Tori's magic needle. At the claw that digs into my shoulder. At the armor covering the gnarled knot of flesh just under my shoulder. Gone is the reminder of what I've been through. It's been replaced with something of my making. Something I gave myself to protect myself. To make me stronger. Not something that was forced on me and my strength grew around it.

Eric lifts up his hand and runs his fingers down my arm, his skin snagging on the few scabs still left. It's not perfect yet, but it's damn close.

"No wonder you kept it hidden," he says and my stomach drops.

I don't need his approval or his blessing. I don't care what he thinks about it. It's on my skin, not his. But all those thoughts don't stop the blush crawling up my neck. The feeling of shame welling within me. I swallow hard and try to keep my response nonchalant.

"Oh yeah?"

He looks up at me then, his gaze holding mine. "It's perfect." I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "Seeing it swollen and scabbed would have been a disservice."

He continues to run his hands along the ink and goosebumps prickle along my back at his touch. He leans forward, his head nearly resting on my chest, and presses his lips into my shoulder, right where the cap turns into scales. His lips are warm and soft, so unlike the image he projects. I feel like this hidden Eric that only comes out behind closed doors is all mine. I share him with no one. Not Max or Jeanine, Kai or the initiates. This is just for me.

I wrap my arm around his head and cradle him to me, soaking in his warmth. In moments like this I forget. I wonder if he feels the same way. If it's the reason why we're so drawn to each other. When it's just us there's no impending war, no torture, no training, no survival. There's just this moment and for right now we live in it forever.

My world spins as he stands up with me in his arms and he walks over to the bed. Gently lowering me down onto the unmade mattress. Sheets crumple under me, but I don't dare move. I don't want to miss a moment as he pulls his shirt off his frame and drops his pants around his ankles. Instead of making commands he trails his fingers down my chest and slowly unbuttons my pants before pulling them off even slower, trailing kisses down my stomach, my legs.

The look in his eyes makes me melt. It washes the blood on his hands away. Tucks the mask into the trunk and lets me see Eric for Eric. The real Eric. The one long buried under piles of rubble. I don’t know how much of him is left in this well, but I allow myself to drown in it, as much as I can.

For all the callouses on his palms his hands are soft as they trail down my arms, my stomach. He presses his naked body against mine and we fit together like puzzle pieces long apart. We don’t fuck. We don’t have sex. We make love.

For years I always laughed at that term. It’s for saps. People with their head in the clouds. Making love is for weepy, lovesick people who don’t know reality. But with every thrust, every tender kiss, I have no other words for it. In this moment we aren’t primal. We aren’t savage or needing. We’re perfect.

When we’re done we lie under the covers even though sweat slicks our bodies. I cuddle into the nook of his shoulder, his arm wrapped around my back, holding me to him. His fingers trace along the edges of my tattoo and I close my eyes and settle into the feeling.

It feels like an eternity filled with comfortable silence before Eric speaks.

“Do me a favor,” he says, a whisper to the side of my head, just above my ear.

I grunt into his shoulder, the smell of his skin musky. Silence weighs heavy again and I can’t tell if he’s waiting for more of a response from me or just building unnecessary tension.

After an interminable pause he says, “Don’t keep anything from me.”

The heat flushing my skin turns to ice and it takes everything in my power not to tense up against him. Instead I grunt again, this time with an inflection up, like I’m putting a question mark at the end of the noise. Like I don’t know what he’s talking about.

He heaves a deep breath, and I rise and fall with his chest. “I don’t want to have to find anything out by surprise. That . . . might not go so well.”

My body wants to shake, but I won’t let it. I can’t tell what he’s insinuating, but the image, the feeling, of me snapping his neck in my fear simulation haunts me. Is that what he’s saying? Don’t make him choose in public because that will end poorly? I don’t know. I don’t dare know. Still playing dumb I shift my head so my mouth is free and I’m facing the wall, away from him.

“Eric, what are you talking about?”

There’s no concern in my voice. No hitch. It’s as even, and confused, as it can be. Still my heart shudders. My stomach clenches. What does he know?

“Sometimes,” he says and pauses, taking a deep breath. “Sometimes I don’t know what kind of decision I’m going to make until I make it. So many years of this, it’s getting harder to stop myself.”

Fuck. He knows something. Or he suspects something. Otherwise why give me this thinly-veiled warning? Did someone see us when Four and I went out into the ruins? Is Kai a little too good at her snooping? Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell could it be?

Still, I play it calm. Smooth. I rest my chin on his shoulder and look at him, a frown on my face. “Where is this coming from?”

He looks down at me then, his face impassive. Not the mask, but he’s still missing emotion. His eyes search my face. For what I have no idea. He runs his fingers through my hair, brushing it out of my eyes.

“Max needed files out of his computer. I found traces that shouldn’t have been there. Someone accessing his desktop remotely.” A sad smile curls up his lips and seeps into his gaze. “I traced it to your computer.”

I swear I feel my heart stop. My chest goes silent. My blood runs cold. He could snap my neck now and I’d be dead and everything I worked for would be for naught. But looking at him now, I don’t feel that’s what he would do. Not right now. But when pushed . . .

I thought I was being careful. I figured no one else used Max’s computer except for Max. Bad assumption on my part, especially when it comes to Eric. He’s Erudite. He’d know the signs of a hack. Still, I try to play it off as something it’s not.

I shrug. “I’m just being nosy. It bit me in the ass back in Erudite too. Just can’t help myself. I know there’s more going on. What can I say?” I smile, something I hope looks embarrassed and not like a grimace. “I’m impatient.”

He gives me that same sad smile again and pulls my face toward him. For half a second I think this is it. I’ve violated his trust and now he’s going to void my life. Instead he presses his lips to my forehead and lets them linger there for a moment before pulling away just a fraction.

“Don’t make me choose,” he whispers.

I don’t fight a shiver and I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Hs lips press into my forehead again before he pulls away completely and rests his chin on my head. I cradle myself back into his shoulder and wrap myself into him. What do I say to that? I can’t make him choose between duty and me because duty could rightly win out. And that makes me dead.

His fingers continue to graze along my tattoo and I press my ear into his chest, listening to his heart beat a steady rhythm. Not even so much as an uptick. No nervousness. Nothing. 

Eric’s not kidding. If it came down to it, he might not choose me. And if my fear sim was any indication, I might not choose him either. I curl deeper into him and close my eyes tight against the thought, trying to forget everything except the feel of his skin on mine.


	25. 25

“Hey, you got a sec?”

I look up from the floor, finding myself in a daze, to see Bennie walking toward me. Today’s an off day and I’ve found myself wandering. All the shit around me, it’s so much deeper than I ever thought. So much more complex. I don’t know what to do. With it, with myself. I’m feeling shiftless and the only person I can turn to is nowhere to be found. And I’m not talking about Eric.

Her face is set, almost pensive, as she approaches. Her hand reaches out and grabs my elbow, firm yet gentle, and turns me away from wherever I was heading. When I get my bearings I realize I'm walking toward the Pit. I don’t know where I’ve been. I don’t know where I’m going. And I’m not sure how I feel about Bennie finding me like that. But who knows how many people have seen me already. I feel like a mess.

We tuck into a corner and I watch her face as she scans the walls and the ceiling. When I look up I notice what she’s seeing. Or not seeing. No cameras. I look around and come to full attention, going stiff in her hand. She voluntarily lets her fingers slide away as I look around and see the run down corner of Dauntless we’ve wandered into.

It reminds me of the rooms in the basement, ceilings water-stained and floors dingy. I rub my arms to fight back the chill as I try to forget what I did in those rooms and what might happen in this murky little corner with Bennie.

I immediately step away from her, on the alert. She’s never shown me any kind of derision before and has, in fact, defended me to Kai. But I don’t know her and I don’t trust her and I value living too much.

“You need to watch your back,” she says and I narrow my eyes.

The tone with which she says it, I can’t tell if she’s threatening me or warning me and I take another step back.

“I do, huh?”

“Look,” she says, her figure deflating, her shoulders slumping. Despite the low light in our dingy corner I can see the bags under her eyes. “I didn’t want to get involved. Kai can be a bag of shit sometimes, but she’s been a good friend. But this . . .”

“Out with it, Bennie.” I’m not looking for story time. Especially when it’s a story I already know. My alarm bell is going off and I don’t know whether it’s a false alarm or the real deal. I see traps everywhere and it’s made me twitchy.

“Kai’s looking to hang you and she has proof of you and Eric.”

My teeth grind together as I clench my jaw, but I keep my face like stone. “Of me and Eric what?”

Bennie just rolls her eyes. “Most people don’t pay attention. They don’t give a shit. But you two have changed and Kai’s had it out for you from the beginning. She put the two together and started digging. She knows Jeanine doesn’t want fraternizing. It’s the one thing she has over you and she plans on using it.”

I grunt in frustrating and let out a sigh that comes from the pit of my soul. “What the fuck is her problem? Seriously. What is it about me that she hates so much? Is she butthurt that Eric sticks his dick me and not her? Because how fucking petty.”

Bennie shakes her head and looks down. “That’s part of it, yeah. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she’s not having any of it.”

“Obviously,” I mumble.

“But the bigger problem is she doesn’t trust you. She thinks you getting dropped into Dauntless by Jeanine is too convenient. That you’re hiding something. Or covering something up.”

A flash of ice ripples across my skin, but I push it back. “What could I possibly be covering up?”

Bennie shrugs and then leans down to my ear. ”Evelyn sends her regards.”

Before I can take another breath the gun at my hip is out of its holster and in Bennie’s face, my finger on the trigger. Bennie immediately puts her hands in the air and backs herself into the corner. For a second I think she’s going to cower, but in a blink her hand’s on my gun, trying to wrest it away from me. I should have known. Dauntless don’t go down without a fight.

She tries chopping into my arm, and it hurts like hell, but my elbow doesn’t buckle. Instead I throw it into her neck and she chokes and falls back. I grab her and throw her onto the ground, climbing on top of her and locking her arms at her sides with my legs, the barrel of my gun square in her face.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hand you over to Max right now.” 

My heart’s thudding in my chest, but playing the part of the Dauntless rube is far too easy. Except my reaction is entirely at Evelyn’s name. I gave myself away immediately. Any other Dauntless would have heard that name and not known who it was. But I can still hand her over. Expose her while keeping myself safe. But my heart hates that thought. I know where she’ll end up. Hell, it could even be me working her over. But, if it’s my ass or Bennie’s, I quite favor my own posterior.

She gasps and pants underneath me. I know she’s trying to breath around the pressure I’m putting on her chest, but I’m not about to let up. “Because I’m trying to tell you to stay away from the weapons capture. It’s a set up.”

“A set up by who?” I snarl and press the gun into her forehead.

“Dauntless.” She swallows hard while eyeing the steel barrel at her face. “The Factionless are escalating, as you know. Max and Jeanine want to know how far it will go.”

Information truly is siloed. Or someone suspects my involvement, which would be why I don’t know about this.

“I’m as close to Jeanine as one gets,” I spit back at her. “How have I not heard about this?”

“Kai was right about one thing,” she says, trying to laugh under pressure. Literally. “You do think highly of yourself.” I roll my eyes at her response. “Whatever you do for her is completely different from what I do and Jeanine makes sure that no one has anymore information than they need to do their job. I don’t think I want to know what you do, especially if Eric’s involved. I’m on the Factionless side, not the Divergent side, and we’re playing a different game. You’re brought in when you’re needed. Eric will be in on this one. So will Kai. It could get ugly.”

I breathe through my nose for a moment, staring down the woman underneath me. She holds my gaze, not looking away for a second. Where did this woman come from?

“What’s your role in all of this?” I keep the gun in her face, but I loosen my grip just a little. Just so it’s not obvious that my hand’s starting to shake.

She chuckles, a sardonic thing that sounds more like a haggard cough. “When you get an error on your test, you do what you can to survive. Right, Bo?”

I drop the gun to my side and stare at her for a second longer before pulling myself up. I reach a hand out and Bennie stays prone on the floor for a moment before grabbing my hand and pulling herself to her feet.

“How did you find out about me?” I tuck the gun back into the holster and lean against the wall, suddenly exhausted.

She looks away from me for a second, scanning the hallway for people, before turning back to me. “When I went to tell Evelyn about the set-up she told me about you and Four.”

“So she wants us to back off of it too?” I know what comes out of my mouth, but the sinking feeling in my gut tells me the truth.

Bennie shakes her head. “She said to warn you. So you’re prepared.”

I shake my own head this time and pinch the bridge of my noise. “She’s willing to sacrifice her own son for what? Some guns?”

“Evelyn only sees the bigger picture. One life will never weigh the same as hundreds. Even her son. I mean she left him alone with Marcus, after all.”

Truths slap me in the face and I can’t help but reel. I sag more into the wall and let my face drop into my hands. The bigger picture. Everything I’ve done has been for the bigger picture. What’s one life when I’m saving many, right? I could gag. I’m no better than Evelyn. Than Jeanine. Two women who I can’t stand. And what am I? Nothing more than a tool for them to use. And I feel like it. A tool.

I take a deep breath and pull myself back up. Bennie’s face hangs near mine, a concerned look twisted across it. So what do I do? Go and risk capture? Or stay behind and sacrifice all the Factionless who are bound to get caught? Who is more important to the cause? A couple of spies, or a dozen soldiers?

I look up at her then, and take in her face. Her skin is young, unblemished except for tired lines ringing her eyes. Like she barely finds sleep at night. Or any time. And maybe she doesn’t. If she’s like me she’s imbedded herself deep, and who knows what scenes lie behind those eyes. And now she’s here, helping someone just like her. Someone who’s given over their entire life for a cause. Maybe she still knows what that cause is. I’m having a hard time remembering.

“And where will you be during all of this?”

She gives me a sad smile, the corner of her lip twisting up. “I’m leading the charge with Eric."

My heart goes still. “And what will you actually do?”

Her small smile doesn’t falter. “Save as many Factionless as possible without killing myself in the process. Not my first rodeo, Bo. I’ve practiced my slight of hand a few times before.”

I feel like a child. I thought it knew it all. I know I can fight. I’m one of the best they have here. But I’m nowhere near as inside as I thought. Then again I thought there was only one inside. Turns out Jeanine has multiples, all segregated and working to her liking. I hate her even more. I sacrificed myself like this thinking I was as deep as I could get only to find out there are different tunnels down in the basement. It was so much simpler when I just had the one mission in mind. Now I feel like my mind’s fractured and I’m having trouble picking up the pieces.

“You’re still alive so I imagine Eric doesn’t know.” The question shatters the silence between us and my breath catches in my throat. I want to deny it. I want to tell her that he’s oblivious, but he’s not.

I shake my head. “But he suspects. He . . .” My voice shudders as I try to find the words. “He told me not to make him choose between me and duty.”

“Huh.” She pulls back from me and stands up straighter. “Really?” I nod. “And he didn't kill you on the spot.”

I lift up my arms and motion toward my very alive self. “Obviously not.”

She frowns then and gives me a look I’m not sure how to interpret. Questioning? Suspicious? Awestruck?

“What are you doing to him?”

Her tone isn’t necessarily accusatory, but it’s more than just a question. “Nothing?”

“Eric’s a machine, Bo. He’s a soldier to the core. Everything’s black and white with him and he’s not afraid to show his might and make examples out of people. You’ve seen it.”

“Eric’s more than what he seems,” I say.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” she responds, her eyebrow raised. “He didn’t get to where he is because he played nice.”

I raise my own eyebrow back at her. “And I did?”

“Not saying that. I’m just saying Eric’s a master game player. Just keep your cards close to your chest with him. I’d hate to pull your corpse out of the chasm.”

I roll my eyes at her and start to walk away. “Thanks for your concern.”

Fingers wrap around my arm and she tugs me back to her. I barely move, but I turn around all the same, my eyes roving up her arm until they land on her face. I say nothing and let silence fill the space between us, weighing it heavier and heavier until she fills it.

“I know you want allies here.”

“I really don’t,” I say, breaking through her words. She rolls her eyes back at me and continues.

“Eric is not an ally. Eric is the enemy. Trust me, Bo. Please. Be careful.”

My eyes rove over her face, taking in her features, my ears scanning through her words, looking for something disingenuous. Maybe she’s in on it with Kai, trying to tear me apart piece by piece, going in where she thinks I’m weakest. But it plays into my own paranoia, doesn’t it? That Eric’s been playing me all along. Everything he’s said and done has been him working toward Jeanine’s end game, not his own. That anything left of Eric is dead and buried, leaving only the mask.

Except my gut tells me that’s not the case. My bullshit-o-meter stays cold when he’s around and it’s just the two of us. I believe his touch, his breath on my neck, the beat of his heart next to mine. I believe him when he tells me not to make him choose. That seems like one hell of a warning coming from him, something I don’t think he’d give me. He also wouldn’t underestimate me so much to think that he could fuck his way into my head.

Except he kind of has.

I take a deep breath and fashion a genuine smile onto my lips. “Thank you Bennie. I mean that. I didn’t get this far not being careful and I need you to trust that I’m being careful, always.”

She nods, her arms crossing over her chest. “Watch yourself on the ambush. It’s going to be ugly.”

“I know,” I say and this time it’s she who walks away. 

I don’t doubt that Dauntless are going to flip that train upside down to try and upend the Factionless shanghai. They’re going to kill, they’re going to capture, and they’re going to torture people as a result of this mission. My goal is to minimize the casualties and make sure Four and I come out alive and unidentified. That means we need to think like Dauntless who think they know how the Factionless are going to act, and do the opposite.


	26. 26

We had to give the activists a crash course in training. Dauntless would expect a “surprise” attack, random, unhinged, shooting from the hip. And that’s what they almost got. Can’t say I necessarily blame them. Tactics like that have worked in the past, but it results in too many casualties. And at this point they need to work smarter, not harder.

So we train them to plan. To make a multi-pronged attack that will at least take some of the Dauntless by surprise. If my fellow soldiers are smart they’ll be prepared for everything. Unfortunately for them, fortunately for us, many of them are cocky and will go into this grossly underestimating their opponents. Bad call. The Factionless are fighting to survive. Dauntless are just fighting. Far more incentive for the Factionless and they’ll just fight harder by default.

Still it took some coaxing, Four stepping in where I kept failing to get my point across. Sometimes I’m not very good at explaining things in a way people who might not have my knowledge would understand. I would make a very poor teacher when it comes to conveying concepts. And I kept failing with the Factionless. But I at least had Four to fill in any gaps I made and they usually understood everything he said. Some of that could have rightly been chauvinist prejudice, but since they don’t have very much, I’ll give them that. I’m not going to waste my time belaboring a point in a fight I will never win. So I’m not going to waste my breath.

Now we sit here and wait. In the dark and the cold, hidden in a tree line a little ways off from the track. Waiting for the train to pass us by. It’s just before a bridge and the train will be at its slowest as it nears the entrance to cross over. It’ll give us all the time we need to get onto the train and meet the others.

No doubt about it Dauntless will be on that train. Kai and Bennie and Eric. Maybe even some of the newer recruits who passed muster. Their first big bang. They’ll be acting as security for the weapons and a surprise for the heist they think is coming. Oh it’s still coming. Just not how they think it’s going to play out.

In the train now as it travels along the tracks, chugging away to meet us, sits a handful of human dynamite. Tucked into crates, stuffed into corners. Waiting. Four and I have it timed. They just have to keep track on the watches we gave them. Once it reaches a certain time, they pop out, we board, and effect our plan.

I have no doubt the Dauntless won’t expect the interior attack. If they did they would have double-checked the crates before they were loaded. They didn’t. On top of that they’ll need to contend with the external attack that Four and I will be mounting using far more flash and bang than people to back it up. Which is fine. We just need a diversion. A slight of hand to draw the eye. Then we move in.

We’re all dressed in the darkest colors we could find, coming up just short of actual Dauntless clothes. We didn’t want to make it too obvious. And we’re all wearing masks, nothing more than our eyes showing, our hair covered. Most of the Factionless are named and can be easily recognized with Dauntless’s facial recognition technology. We’re not about to have that. Especially with me and Four. Not that we wouldn’t be recognized immediately.

The train horn blows in the distance and I take a deep breath, letting it steam out in front of me in one big puff. Next to me Four does the same. I turn to look and he’s little more than a shadow, darkness against the dark night. No moon tonight, making everything all the harder to see. And we’re without any kind of night vision. A handful of Factionless are squatting in the bushes with us, waiting.

The train horn sounds again and it makes my skin jump. I check my guns strapped to my legs, the knives at my hips, and grab two flash bangs out of my jacket pockets. We all have them. Multiples of them. And our people inside have shades and earplugs. They’re the ones that’ll need to work through the noise and smoke to drop the cargo. Time is short and the bridge is even shorter. If they don’t make the drop to the Factionless waiting at the bottom of the ravine we’ve blown our chances.

Squealing breaks shatter the night at the train slows down. Its headlight cuts through the night and lights up the bridge hundreds of yards in advance of it even getting there. Leaves and branches and clothes shuffle around me as everyone stands, preparing for our launch. The second the train’s in sight we start running. As fast as we can, barreling toward the rest of our lives, the short or the long of it.

We’re scattered along the individual cars, hanging onto the side. The people that cling to the moving train are all Dauntless rejects, those best-suited to this mission. Those inside the crates are Erudite failures, wanting nothing more than to stick it right back to Jeanine.

I pull the tab on one of my flash bangs and keep the lever depressed, waiting for my moment. Winter wind stings what little skin I have exposed, makes my eyes water, but I blink it all away. Four’s words before we left the Factionless headquarters keep repeating in my mind: _stay away from Eric_. If there’s anyone who will know me immediately it’ll be him. I’m buried in clothing, my actual shape indistinguishable from the rest of the Factionless around me. But it’ll only take a second of fighting for him to recognize who he’s fighting against. I can’t risk him finding out. Or confirm his suspicions, if his words to me meant anything.

The only problem is I have no idea which car he’s in. Dauntless didn’t make that decision until they boarded and we were long into Factionless territory by then. I hope luck’s on my side tonight.

A hundred yards before we hit the bridge and we throw our flash bangs as one, lighting up the inside of the cars in one giant burst of light, noise, and smoke. 

It happens quickly. 

Cries echo from inside the cars as pieces of wood and metal get shoved aside, clatter to the floor. Feet hustle, people mutter out curses, scream out orders. The Factionless move fast. They don’t want to be in the car any longer than they have to.

Fifty yards from the bridge and those of us on the outside of the cars hang ourselves into the latches keeping the doors closed. A three count later and we’re shoving them open, exposing the panic inside to the winter night.

“Get your fucking finger off the trigger! You don’t fire a fucking gun when you can’t see fucking shit, you fucking moron!”

Eric. Mother fuck. Of course I end up with his car. Not a damn thing I can do now other than utilize the smoke cover to the best of my ability.

I didn’t hear shots, meaning Eric walked up on whoever that was about to fire blindly into a smoked up train car. It’s barely been a week and already they’re forgetting their training. That doesn’t bode well. Not that it’ll matter. The chips they’re implanted with will do all the thinking for them once they’re activated.

The first bag of weaponry comes flying out, closely followed by the next. The ravine isn’t deep and I hear the bags clattering to the ground. Barely. The panic inside still takes up most of my attention.

I step a foot into the car, followed by another, taking my stand as guard while the Factionless unload the train. A smudge of black sails through the air, aiming for the head of the person next to me. I block it with the butt of my rifle and snap it back into the person’s face. The smoke is so thick they’re nearly on top of me before I can see anything of them other than their flailing gun.

Not Eric. Possibly the new initiate he just screamed at.

I’m jerked backward and my gun clatters to the floor of the train, out of reach. An unrecognizable face hovers over me for a second before a fist comes flying my way. Far too slowly. I kick my legs out and topple the girl. I pick her up by the lapels and smash her back into the wall of the car, her head knocking against the metal. All of a sudden she’s not so unrecognizable. Kai. I want to say something snarky, but I can’t risk anyone hearing my voice, so I keep my mouth shut.

A pain so exquisite explodes in my abdomen and my knees buckle. Stars flash in front of my eyes and my weight falls into Kai, pinning her to the wall. When the flashing stops enough that I can see again she sneers at me, her nose twitching.

“I’m taking you alive, Factionless filth.”

I look down and a small serum capsule sticks out of my stomach. With one hand still on her chest I reach down and yank it out, nearly crying out with the release. I stare at the piece for a second before I grunt. A bullet wound simulator. I knew that felt familiar.

I flick the thing away and grit my teeth as the serum dissipates. She must think I’m incapacitated enough that she can get one over on me, but I hear the knife _schick_ before she can act. Even though every movement still sends bolts of pain radiating throughout my body I grab her hand and smash it back into the wall a few times until she drops it. Idiot. What was she planning on doing? Shanking me in the gut? How alive did she actually want me?

Before I can throw her a blow that’ll knock her clean out the collar of my shirt yanks against my throat and I choke on the air stuck there. My fingers immediately find the edges and feebly attempt to pull the fabric away, to free up my windpipe so it can be used for its intended purpose. But even when the hold lifts and I can get in a gasp my back is slammed into the floor and all the air I was able to take in rushes right out of me again.

My mouth gapes open, gasping for air that doesn’t come, and a face I desperately didn’t want to see hovers over me. Luckily my facial covering is still in place. All he sees is my eyes. And I see all of him. The indignant rage pulsing in the veins at his temple. The flex of his jaw, his twitchy trigger finger as it dances over the guard on the gun.

He grabs the front of my jacket and yanks me up, his eyes all Dauntless. Pure mission. Tunnel vision at its best. Then he catches my eyes and when he goes to look away he catches himself. He doesn’t. He holds my gaze and I see the mood in his face shift. For a second that feels like infinity the soldier rage he worked into himself over the years disappears and a frown of confusion crawls its way over his features. This was the moment he warned me about. Not to make him choose. Once his soldier’s lizard brain turns off and his brain allows him to comprehend who is underneath him I just might cease to exist.

Or my own survival instinct will kick in and I’ll lose my lover.

As if screams and another flash bang and flesh smacking against flesh aren’t sounding all around him, Eric reaches out, his fingers gently grazing along the cloth covering my face. Fingers trace the edges, slowly pulling down. I should stop him, but I find I can’t. I’ve carried this secret for so long I want to unload. Maybe I want it all to end so I can finally be free of it.

Except in an instant his weight is off of me and all I see are boots as Eric is yanked backward, freeing me.

Instantly I sit up and scramble back, my hand going to my face to make sure my mask is still secure. On the other side of the car, smacking into crates, is a black-clad figure, nothing but eyes, pounding on Eric, constantly catching him off guard and beating him to the floor.

Four.

Not too many people can take Eric, but he’s one of them who can. I’m stunned. Not sure what I should do. All my training has evaporated in Eric’s recognition of me. What does this even mean?

Then my senses come back to me when I end up with a gun under my chin and a Dauntless squatting in front of me. The woman is sneering, grim lines etched into her cheeks, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Bennie.

“Punch me. Hard. And get the fuck out of here.”

She doesn’t need to tell me twice. I land a blow to the side of her head and she goes down like a brick. I scramble up and stumble my way to the car door. We’re still over the ravine, but barely. I only have a couple seconds left. The other Factionless have already cleared out. It’s just me and Four left in the car and he’s still battling Eric.

I look over my shoulder and see them tumbling around. Eric has Four pinned to the floor, his meaty fist raised up, and it comes crashing down onto the shadowed body of my partner in crime. Like that stops him, though. Four lands a chop to Eric’s throat and Eric stumbles back, his hands around his neck, choking. In a fit of rage he picks Four up and throws him across the car, his body smashing into a stack of crates not too far from where I’m standing.

Eric stands up, composes himself, and looks directly at me. Our eyes meet, our gazes hold, and that frown etches itself across his face once again. Confusion and recognition and disbelief all rolled into one. I don’t hear the word he mutters over the racket of the train and Four scrambling up next to me, but I watch his lips form the word. My name. Madeline.

My partner is at my side without me realizing it, nothing but his eyes showing. He nods and I look away from Eric just as his soldier senses come back to him and he charges us. Together we jump out of the train car, into the deep black of night, and tumble to the bottom of the ravine, the train clacking overhead as it carries on without us.


	27. 27

I run without stopping, sprinting as hard as my lungs will push me, as fast as my legs will carry me, back to Dauntless. I have to beat them back. If Eric has any suspicions he’ll come to my apartment. I have to be there, composed and in a dead sleep, before he gets there.

Everyone’s left behind. I did my job. The rest of the people in that chain can do theirs and clear out the ravine, get those arms to safety in Factionless headquarters. Me and Four, we have to save ourselves. I don’t know if he was made or not, but he has an ass to save too.

We split up, taking different paths back to headquarters. No one can see us together. No one can suspect. At the edge of the Factionless wastes I ditch any non-Dauntless clothes I’m wearing, throwing them into a Dumpster. Someone else will pick them up and use them again. At least they won’t go to waste. 

By the time I get back to Dauntless I’m back in Dauntless black and sliding through a back door and into an empty hallway blessedly free of cameras thanks to its position in a barely-used part of the building. It leaves us incredibly vulnerable, but Dauntless are bold and cocky. No one would dare break into our building.

I stick my hands in my pockets, keep my head down, and make my way back up to my apartment. Of course I’ll show up on cameras, but unless Max demands the footage, no one will really see it, and those who do won’t do anything about it. They won’t know any better.

By the time I’m back in my apartment my heart’s racing. No way am I going to be able to get to sleep. Luckily there are drugs for that. I pretend like it’s a normal day and toss my dirty clothes in the hamper, put away my boots. Take a shower, get in my pajamas, and lie down in bed. On the nightstand is a small bottle of pills that will bring sleep down on me in a matter of seconds. I just need to take one. It’ll sink me into sleep and even if Eric comes in thirty seconds after I pass out it’ll be like I’ve been asleep for hours when he tries to wake me.

I pause for a second, listening to the world around me, and all is quiet. No stomping, no pounding. It’s night and the world is asleep. So I grab a pill and place it on my tongue before reaching for the glass of water I placed next to my bed. I knock back a sip, toss the bottle into the drawer, and shut off the light. As the drug promised, it dissolves quietly and sleep pulls me down from the bones and the world around me fades away in a blink.

I’m dreaming I can’t take a breath. My chest is tight and no matter how big I open my mouth air stays away. I’m choking, pawing at my neck to get the phantom blockage away. After a second I feel fingers, I feel tightness at my neck. Sleep pulls away from me and my real world comes rushing in and the hands around my neck tighten.

For a second panic floods me, making me freeze. Then my training kicks in and I smash at the arms holding me down and use my legs to kick at the person on top of me. The smell of musk and soap fills my nose and I know it’s Eric on top of me before I can even see him. I feel the callouses on his hands scratching against my skin. I hear his grunts as he puts pressure on my neck. I hear his choke as I swing out and punch him in the throat before sending a knee up into his stomach.

I get my legs leveraged and kick him off of me. I hear him roll off the bed and hit the ground with a thump. With a flick I turn my bedside lamp on and grab the gun from the nightstand and rack the slide in one fluid motion. I hold the firearm out, my finger on the trigger, ready to pull, and aim it directly at Eric’s head as he stands up.

“What the fuck were you doing there?”

His eyes are wild, his finger pointing at me. Rage distorts his face into a cruel mask. His hand clenches into a fist, knuckles going white.

“What the shit are you talking about, Eric? Where’s there? Dreamland?”

My heart is pounding, nearly in my throat, but sleep is still heavy in my eyes, in my voice. I can’t tell how much time has passed since I took the pill and I’m not about to look at the clock right now.

“Don’t be a fucking smart ass with me, Bo. I know it was you at the heist tonight. Who are you working with?”

I overwhelm myself with confusion and allow it to twist my features up in a mock frown. “What heist? You think I was part of something so you FUCKING CHOKE ME IN MY SLEEP, YOU FUCKING PSYCHO??!!”

He steps closer to me despite the gun I’m holding in his face, stepping into my space. “I asked you never to lie to me. That you don’t need to keep anything from me.” For a moment the rage fizzles from his features, but his eyes are still wide. Angry? Panicked? I can’t tell. But his voice is eerily calm. “Do not lie to me, Bo. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Don’t lie to me.”

It takes a minute but the indignation overwhelms me. He suspects me of something, regardless of whether I’m actually a part of it or not, and despite what he does or doesn’t know. So his initial response is to break into my apartment and choke me out of a dead sleep.

“Get the fuck out,” I say, gun still firmly in my hand, pointed steadily at Eric’s head. “Unless you want to eat lead.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up and I actually see the mask slide on. In my apartment, where we’ve fucked each other raw. Where we’ve shared secrets. And he deigns to wear the mask for me now.

“I don’t think you can do it,” he says, his voice mocking.

In a flash I point the gun at the floor near his feet and pull the trigger. I flinch as the report fills my apartment to bursting. No doubt that just shoved some people out of bed. And I really hope no one was in the way of the bullet as it tore through the floor. Eric at least had the good graces to jump out of the way, a manic, shocked frown on his face.

“Are you fucking nuts?”

His voice is nearly a screech, as if I’d deign to not live up to his expectations of me. As if I wouldn’t respond to his taunts and his goading.

“Maybe next time you won’t second-fucking-guess me. Are you going to get out or are you going to push me again?”

“You need to calm down,” he says, his hands up, trying to placate me.

“You need to leave. You don’t get to tell me what to do after you break into my apartment and choke me in my sleep because you think I did something you didn’t like. Not sure what your last girlfriends were like, but maybe you can go sleep choke them if they’re into that. Not my thing.”

Eric wipes his hand over his face and backs away. “Maybe we should both sleep on it.”

“I was sleeping,” I say, my voice cold as ice. “Until you choked me awake.”

“And you shot at me.”

“Anything I did after I got your hands off my neck can be considered self-defense. Don’t stand there pretending it was unprovoked.”

I’m as calm as I’ve ever been in this moment. All parts of my soldier brain are running on high, keeping me steady, composed. I’m thinking plain as day. He did recognize me. That much is clear. Now I need to make him doubt he ever saw anything. I can’t tell if I’m doing a good job of that or not, but at least he’s backing off.

“I know how good you can play the part, Bo. I know how easy it is for you to slide into soldier mode. I do the same thing.”

“Doesn’t make me a liar. Good to know you trust me, Eric.”

“Just about as much as you trust me.”

Touche. 

“Look, I’m sorry. Maybe I was a little rash.”

“A little?” Now it’s my turn for my voice to squeak. He’s got to be kidding me.

He rolls his eyes as if I’m the one being difficult. “Fine. Maybe we should revisit this tomorrow when we’ve both calmed down.”

“Is this where you get out now?” I don’t actually want him to leave. I want to tell him everything. Unload this burden. But the game needs to be kept in play. He’s too close. He has found me out. I just won’t let him know it. And he has to understand waking me up by choking me is not fucking okay.

“I’ll come find you tomorrow,” he says as he walks toward the door, too slowly for my liking.

“Good luck with that,” I respond, keeping my gun raised and pointed at him.

“You can’t run from this, Bo,” he says before opening the door and closing it behind him as he slides out of my apartment.

“But I’m good at dodging,” I mutter as I stomp over to the door and throw all the locks back into place. For good measure I slide the couch in front of the door so at least if Eric decides to pick the locks again he’s going to need to move furniture in order to get back in.

And I’m pretty sure I’ve made a mortal enemy of the person living underneath me.

I pop the bullet in the chamber and clip it back into the magazine before setting the safety back on and tucking the gun into my drawer. I flop down on the bed and wait for my heart to stop thudding in my chest. Looking over at the clock doesn’t help my cause. I’d been down for twenty minutes. Not nearly enough of a buffer between getting back and Eric breaking and entering into my home.

What the hell am I going to do about him? Bennie knew it was me. Did Kai recognize me? Doubtful. I was covered. Eric saw my eyes. I think the only other person in the world who knows me well enough to recognize me by eyes alone would be Jeanine. 

Which means Bennie saw Eric hesitate. She saw him reach for my face, for my mask. Or I got lucky and she was just trying to save a Factionless and it just so happened to be me. But the chance she saw Eric’s reaction is there. And that means Kai could have seen it too. Based on what I’m hearing Eric appears to be different around me, acting all human-like. That’s apparently out of character for the soulless robot soldier. So if Kai did happen to see Eric have a very human reaction to someone, and she knows that we’re together, that’s way too many pieces of the puzzle she’ll be putting together.

Fucking shit fuck.

I’m going to need to head this off somehow. I can’t let Kai get anything back to Jeanine, even if it is speculation. I’ll start pulling data in the morning. There were cameras all over the train cars. I can “compare” potential Dauntless rejects to the known features of the hijackers and present it to Jeanine. Far more rational than Kai’s tattling.

My head flops into my hands and I take a deep breath. All the different pieces of my world are converging and they’re making a damn fine mess of everything.


	28. 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I missed posting a chapter last week, you get another one! But I have a feeling you all are going to hate me at the end of this one . . . ;)

We’re out in the Pit, hiding in plain sight. I lean against the wall in front of Four, my arms crossed over my chest as he talks. I don’t have a smile on my face per se, but I’m relaxed, quirking up the corner of my lip, making it look like we’re having a casual conversation when we’re discussing the outcome of the raid.

No one died. Huge plus. Everyone evaded capture. Even bigger plus. There were still some injuries from some of the fights that broke out in the cars when the plan went off. But we got the weapons and Dauntless got their asses handed to them. At least those on the raid. 

Bennie, Kai, and Eric were all looking extra surly the next morning, the bags weighing extra heavy under their eyes, not making eye contact with anyone, keeping their heads down. I wouldn’t want to have been in that room when they had to report that they failed a mission. At least I’m not supposed to know anything about it. My saving grace.

Eric didn’t come to see me the morning after our fight. He was probably wishing I would have shot him instead of him having to report in. I wouldn’t have wanted to meet with him after that anyway. Nothing good would have come of that second encounter. I haven’t seen him since that night.

Four and I both watch the room around us as we talk to each other, our eyes darting around, scanning faces. Taking in the scene while exchanging information. I catch his eyes freeze as he stares over my head. He finishes his sentence before pausing, as if making sure he’s seeing things correctly.

“Eric’s coming,” he says as he looks back down at me.

“Is he strolling or stomping?”

“He has a rather determined step,” Four replies with a smirk, still keeping his eyes on me.

“And a death glare, I imagine,” I say.

“Definitely a death glare.” He leans in closer. “Think I can make lasers shoot out of his eyes?”

I chuckle. “I’d love to see that. Serves him right.”

“A fight?”

I shrug a shoulder. “Something like that. Nothing we can’t handle. I think.”

“Bo.” Eric’s breath is ice on the back of my neck as I turn around and look at him.

“Eric.”

“Max is looking for you.”

“Okay,” I say and turn back around. Four’s eyes stay on Eric a moment longer before shifting back down to me. I try to pick our fake conversation back up and make a show of it, but Eric speaks up again.

“Now.”

I roll my eyes back over to him and I do make a show of being irritated at Eric’s intrusion. Not much acting on my part. “Fine,” I say before I glance back over to Four and say, “I’ll find you later.”

Four nods as I turn back around and lead Eric away from our little corner. There’s a second or two of lag time before he catches up. I’m sure any glares were exchanged before Eric makes his way over to my side.

“Moving on already?” Eric asks as we walk. “I imagine you can do better than Four.”

“Don’t be dramatic. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What drama? I’m not falling all over him.”

I don’t take the bait. “One fight and this is where your head goes? Grow up.”

I hear him inhale through his nose, an angry sound that comes with a side of teeth grinding. “I told you not to make me choose.” 

“Choose shit,” I say as I whirl on him. “We weren’t in the heat of battle. I was asleep and you woke me up by choking me. Shooting you was a light reaction as far as I’m concerned. How about you start with a fucking apology.”

I’m not aware of my surroundings as I bite Eric’s head off. I don’t care. But I’m aware of them now and we’re blissfully almost out of earshot of everyone in the Pit. A few heads turn to look at us, but they quickly turn back around when I fix them with my death glare.

Eric, on the other hand, is all too aware, and he grabs me by the elbow and drags me to a darker corner of a hallway off the Pit, out of the way of prying eyes and snooping ears.

“Fuck, Madeline. I’m sorry, all right? I’m fucking sorry. I reacted poorly.”

“Poorly.”

“Poorly,” he reiterates. “I’m not always . . . rational.”

“Well there’s a surprise.”

“Give me a fucking break, will you?” he says, his face scrunching up in frustration. “Stop acting like you’re perfect and never make a rash move. Like you never make a shitty mistake.”

“Remember when we were in high school, before the Choosing Ceremony, and we went down to that pond buried in the thicks at the edge of the city?”

I don’t know what makes me bring up the memory, at least that particular memory, but something inside me feels it’s relevant. So I roll with it. Eric, on the other hand, looks like he’s been flung from a train.

“Um, yeah. I think so. What does that have to do with anything?”

“There were, like, four of us on that rope swing and we knew it was going to break, but we did it anyway because we wanted to see how far out we could swing.”

A smile creeps up his lip. “You were practically sitting on my shoulders.”

“And you were crushing Angela underneath you, but I don’t think she minded. And Micah was underneath her and we swung. And when we were out over that murky, disgusting water the rope snapped and we dropped like stones.” I look up at him and his arms are crossed over his chest and he’s frowning just a little. I can almost see the images playing out in front of him. “When we came up we were all laughing. It’s like we were untouchable and gave no shits about anything. We were free.”

“There was a lot of algae in that water,” he says, a smirk on his mouth.

I laugh. “We all had it clinging to us. Angela freaked out and I swear she ran on top of the water to get out of it.”

We stand there for a second in the silence left behind by our laughs, each in their own daze of memories. I’m the one to break it.

“When was the last time you felt like that, Eric?”

He’s staring off into space, his eyes unfocused on a point behind my legs. When he drags his eyes up a waning smile is still on his lips, a sadness touching it.

“Before the Choosing Ceremony.”

I nod. “But only in stolen moments, right? Because both of our lives have only ever been about Jeanine and her end game.”

He runs his tongue along his teeth and stares at me, assessing me. “I made my choice.”

“You never had a choice. Neither did I.” I look away then, back toward the Pit nearly hidden from our view. Choice was never part of my equation. I didn’t choose the life I was shoved into. But I’m choosing to break out of it. “Our choices were made by other people. We fight against ourselves. For what? Domination? To what end?”

“To protect our way of life,” Eric says automatically, as if he’s been programmed to say it. Which, of course, he has.

“Does the Eric who flew on the rope with me really believe that?” I ask.

“That Eric was a lifetime ago,” he responds, but it’s a lie that doesn’t reach his eyes. “When he didn’t know what tough decisions were.”

“Does he now?” I frown and tilt my head up to him, questioning. “Or has he done what’s easy because it’s the path of least resistance?”

I strike a chord. His fingers clench into a fist and a muscle twitches at his jaw. “You don’t know shit about the choices I’ve made.”

“I know that the Eric who choked me was the perfect robot soldier. Not thinking, just acting like he was programmed to do. The Eric who fucked me, the Eric who warned me, that’s the Eric who makes decisions for himself. Which Eric am I talking to right now?”

“Fuck you,” he spits and shoves me down the hallway toward the basement and Max’s office. 

“If I’m responsible for forcing the robot to question whether or not he has a heart, I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Help you shake off some of that tin, anyway.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about and it scares the shit out of you.”

My back slams against the wall as Eric presses into me, his finger in my face.

“Don’t you dare deign to think you know me or what I’ve gone through.”

“You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

It’s an admission as much as it’s a helping hand. Judging by the blank look on his face I’m guessing he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. The robot is warring with the human inside him. If I were a betting type of person I’d wager that this is the most uncomfortable moment of Eric’s life. I shoved him into a space in his head that he’s been avoiding, that he’s convinced himself isn’t even there. Because it’s easier than facing the reality of the choices he’s made. He wasn’t lying when he said he buried it all down. And it’s buried deep.

Like Four and Bennie helped me see, I’m helping Eric see. Bennie warned me away from him. Four warned me away from him. But they don’t actually know him. They don’t see the light through the cracks in his facade. They just see the mask, what Eric wants everyone to see. I have no doubt Eric is every bit as ruthless and arrogant as they all say he is. But he’s more than the sum of the parts he exposes.

“You’re treading dangerous water,” he says as he reaches out and strokes my cheek. It takes everything in me not to flinch from his touch. Not a good sign for our relationship, but the fact that we’re talking like this instead of trying to kill each other is a step in the right direction, at least.

“It’s worth the risk,” I respond as I thread my fingers through his and hold his gaze. 

I’m lost in his eyes and only when he frowns am I shaken out of it. “For what? To shake things up? Where’s the worth in that? Where’s the point?”

My lip trembles and I squeeze his hand. Tears brim my eyes and I blink them back. So weak, but he has to understand. He has to know.

“So I don’t have to be afraid anymore,” I whisper and at first I don’t think he hears me. The frown stays on his face until his eyebrows slowly lift and comprehension dawns in his look. Understanding. Shock.

Boots tap against the stone floor and we bolt apart before anyone rounds the corner. His jaw hangs slack for a moment before he closes it, swallowing down the revelation. I officially just handed him my life. Any suspicions he may have had, any inkling, all were just confirmed. And I gave it all to him on a silver platter. I must really have a death wish. Or the biggest hope in the universe that’ll he’ll choose what’s right instead of what’s easy. I wish I can say I know what he’ll choose. Goosebumps prickle my skin at the unknowable thought.

I pull myself off the wall and continue walking. Eric must snap out of it a nanosecond later and he follows me, the third set of steps bringing up the rear. A snort breaks the tension around us and my goosebumps turn into hackles rising.

Kai.

“Having a meeting without me? You should have your team member’s help with anything mission-driven.” 

I can hear the sneer crawling up Eric’s face without turning around to see it.

“Kai, I wound’t want the help of your piss if I were on fire,” I said to the hallway, not deigning to look at her.

“”Talk a little louder,” Eric spits at her. “Get the entire fucking Pit to hear you next time.”

“I’m not the one having a rendezvous in such an obvious hallway.” Fabric swishes. I’m sure she just crossed her arms over her chest. I roll my eyes to the blank hallway in front of me. “Maybe I should let Jeanine know. She’d want to hear about her soldiers colluding against any others.”

“You know Jeanine hates your nagging, right? Narcing isn’t something she’s fond of. From anyone,” I say with as much tone in my voice as I can muster. I’m so sick of her talking.

“Oh,” she says and I jump, my eyes wide and surprise evident on my face as she appears at my side like a sinister ghost. “She seemed rather interested in the things I told her.”

I compose myself and roll my eyes away from her. “I’m sure she did.”

Max’s office door looms ahead of me and I turn the knob and push my way in without knocking.

“You wanted to see me?”

Max looks at me and then his eyes turn over to the other side of the room. I follow his gaze and my heart nearly stops. Jeanine sits in a chair in front of Max’s desk. When I take notice of her, she turns her head to me and pulls a thin-lipped smile that practically runs from her eyes. The ice in the daggers she stares at me could pierce me to the wall.

Fuck.

On the outside I’m not even professional. I’m bored. I have to be. I can read Jeanine like a book. She knows something. I just don’t know how much. And she’s going to hang me with my own peeled and knotted flesh.

“Kai’s been telling me some interesting stories,” Jeanine says, her voice as melodic as the out of tune calliope music coming out of a carnival of nightmares. I imagine a red clown’s mouth painted across her face and jagged peaks of eyebrows reaching her hairline. Comical in a horrifying sort of way.

“She does that a lot,” I say, my voice sardonic, annoyed. I don’t really have to play act that one when it comes to Kai. It’s just my natural response to anything that comes out of her mouth.

“The thing is, Madeline, she’s been rather persistent. And consistent. I told you before I found that interesting.”

“There are far more interesting things in this world,” I respond, trying to keep up my air of boredom as my heart rate starts to spike.

“Like a shot fired in the middle of the night in your apartment?” Her eyebrow quirks up and I want to rip it off.

I shrug. “Nightmare. I shouldn’t sleep with a gun next to my bed. That can be a dangerous combination.”

Jeanine nods, her lips pursing. What I’m telling her, she’s not buying. Double fuck.

She looks down at her nails and when she looks up again it’s not me she looks at, but Eric. My heart sinks down to my feet and for once I can’t predict with any degree of accuracy what’s going to happen next. I’m usually pretty good at reading scenes, but right now I’m completely blind.

I follow her gaze over to him to see he’s not looking at me. The mask’s slid into place and he stares at Jeanine like a dutiful soldier. I hear the clock ticking down on my remaining time on this planet in loud, thunderous tocks.

“Were you in her room that night, Eric?” she asks, her tone deathly sweet.

He pauses and I can almost see the gears grinding in his head. How will he answer?

Finally he does. “Yes.”

A bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck.

“Why?”

I watch him settle into a resolve as he clasps his hands behind his back, making up his mind. “I suspected she was involved in the Factionless munitions heist and I confronted her about it.”

_fuckfuckfuck_

Jeanine turns her head to look at me, that same sly, knowing smile spread across her face. “And was she?”

“I believe so, yes,” he answers without hesitation.

I take slow, measured breaths so I don’t give away that I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. Shit. Bennie warned me. Four warned me. Hell, even Eric warned me about himself. This is what I get for thinking Jeanine left a shred of good in my childhood friend.

“What evidence do you have to support this?” the devil queen asks as she slowly makes her way toward me.

“I recognized her,” he says. When I look at him he’s not even looking at Jeanine anymore. He’s looking straight ahead. A soldier’s stare. Zoned in.

“How?” the viper asks, her eyes narrowing in on me. “Weren’t the Factionless completely covered?”

“Her eyes,” he responds automatically.

That’s when Jeanine looks me in the eye, stares at me. Studies me. “That’s an interesting way to recognize someone. A very intimate way, wouldn’t you say, Eric?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And why is that?”

I hear him swallow from where I stand. Whether he’s trying to push through and second-guessing himself or his mouth’s gone dry from all the fucking talking he’s doing, I don’t know.

“Because we’ve been intimate for months.”

“Ha!”Kai cackles from over in the corner and Max shoots her a glare.

“Not the time,” he hisses at her, but Kai continues to giggle to herself, a jester’s smile on her face as she watches my painfully slow demise.

I hear the echo of the slap before the sting of it registers and my face snaps to the side. A dull throb radiates on my cheek as a thin line of burn tears up my face. I look down at her hand and see the ring. Bitch just backhanded me and cut me open with that fucking ring. I wonder how fast I can kill her, how fast the three Dauntless will be on me. Will I make it? Or will Jeanine survive and I’ll just end up tortured for as long as my body holds out? That’s where I’m probably headed anyway so why the hell not?

Only when I bring my head around three guns are trained on me, one from each of my faction members pointing directly at my head.

Looks like I’m doing jack shit.

Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve sacrificed. Only to have it all end like this. I feel like a loser. A failure. If I weren’t so weak, if I’d just stayed focused, less trusting, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess. Or at least I wouldn’t be here so soon.

“Any other revelations I should know about?” Jeanine asks, her mouth a tight white line stretched across her face. 

Eric clears his throat. “I believe she just confessed to being Divergent.”

For the love of . . . really?

Jeanine stiffens and motions behind her. Max places a handheld in her outstretched palm and she immediately starts searching. Nails tap on glass as she digs further and further into my information. When she finds what she’s looking for she frowns at the screen as she moves through it, enlarges information, keeps flipping.

“There were no known errors in your testing. Your test showed Erudite.”

I look up at her, my eyes hooded, my glare as icy as I can make it. I don’t offer any information. Instead I leave the silence hanging, bloated between us, until she speaks again.

“You’re no longer hiding, Madeline. What do you have to lose now?”

I look at each face, each gun, trained on me. “Dignity?”

Jeanine’s lips twitch into something that could have possibly been a smile had she not been fuming. The corner of her eye twitches and I know she wants to lash out. I’ve seen her do it before. I can count the number of times she’s done it on one hand with fingers to spare, but I’ve seen her do it. Here’s one of her most trusted people, someone from her inner-most circle. Someone who was supposed to be on her side. Except I’m not. She’s dying to tear into me.

But she won’t. Not here. Not in front of others like this. Kai may liken herself to be closer to the queen bee now, but she won’t be. No matter what Kai has given Jeanine, her tactic was all wrong. This isn’t how one wins favor with her.

“You’re well beyond that now.”

“Just imagine,” I say, my voice light. “There’s me, someone you trusted so much, and look what happened. Imagine who else is there. And where. You can’t trust anyone, Jeanine.”

I laugh as she straightens herself and a gun barrel presses uncomfortably hard into my temple. I look up and see Eric out of the corner of my eye, a snarl on his lips. I flick my gaze back over to Jeanine. If I can insert even a shred of paranoia into her comfortable little world I’ll die happy. 

“What happened to your test?” she asks again.

This time I don’t hesitate. “You’re not the only one who can threaten people into submission.”

“Want us to take her downstairs?” Max asks from just behind his leader. 

Downstairs meaning to the torture chamber.

“Imagine what’s in that tiny little brain of hers. I could get it out for you,” Kai says, injecting herself into the conversation. 

I say nothing. I’m done with her. I’m not spending my last pain-free time on earth arguing with that bitch.

“No,” Jeanine says. “I just want her gone.”

I see Eric’s head whip around. “The information she must have—“

“We’ll never get,” Jeanine spits. “Torturing her would just be for the sheer pleasure of it. I built her to resist all of that.”

Like I’m some kind of robot she put together piece by piece. Well, I guess I kind of am. Bitch broke me and built me back up in her image.

“I know how to break her,” Eric adds and I want to strangle him.

“I said no. Just get rid of her.”

“Maybe we should make an example out of her. Scare any others out,” Max adds, thinking he’s being helpful, but I already know where Jeanine’s biting tone is going to go.

“The last thing I want to do is advertise that someone close to me, from a family close to me, was a mole for the Divergents and the Factionless. That shows weakness among my ranks and I will not have that. I should have all of your heads for this.”

No one bothers to mention I’d been living under her wing for the last eight years and only at Dauntless for the last six months. That’s probably wise on everyone’s part, especially if they’re not feeling up to being in my position right now.

“What are you waiting for?” she says, her tone impatient as she motions toward me.

She holds my gaze and I see Max nod at Eric. He steps around me, blocking my view of my number one enemy. He reveals nothing on his face. No hint of emotion save for a slight twitching sneer pulling up his lip. He moves his finger from the guard to the trigger.

I look in his eyes and see that he’s looking right at me. Not at my forehead or the tip of my nose. But he’s returning my gaze. When push came to shove he proved himself to be the dutiful solider after all. I can’t help but feel disappointed. So many things I’ve done wrong, add reading him to that list too.

I don’t close my eyes and I will my muscles not to tense in anticipation. The sound comes first, an echoing boom resonating around the room. Time slows down as the report rings and I swear I see the bullet coming for me. I feel myself start to fall back, the hit of it, and then everything goes black.


	29. 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy hell! That was an incredible response! I certainly got you all riled up. I just hope I continue to live up to expectations. One of the good things about Eric is that he is such a static character and Roth didn't really provide a whole hell of a lot for me to go on here so I'm working within the confines of his character from the book and Jai Courtney's portrayal in the movies, melding them together and then building up the WHY behind it all. Because there has to be a reason. I refuse to believe there isn't behind his character. So I'm giving him one. And it will continue to develop. I would say there are fewer than 10 chapters left at this point, but don't hold me to that. Last time I said that I exceeded that expectation by an additional 10 chapters.

The first thing I realize is I have no air. The second thing I realize is that everything is black. My eyes pop open and my mouth drops of its own accord and my lungs suck in air. It’s not me doing that. The things a body does on its own when it’s about to die.

Die.

I lurch up, blinking, gasping for air. My brain is a blank. I don’t even know who I am until it starts flooding in piece by piece as my mind wakes up. As if from hibernation. Death.

Death.

What the hell happened?

Am I dead?

I lift an arm up and a sheet slips over me and falls to my lap. I’m still clothed. Clothed in what? Dauntless regs. I’m in Dauntless clothes. I flip the sheet off of me. My boots are still on. What was I doing? Why am I on a metal table?

I look around the room and subdued light surrounds me, as does dozens of small metal doors. Maybe only wide enough each to fit . . . the table I’m on. I notice the temperature. How cool it is in here. I swing my legs over the side of the table and press my booted feet to the ground. My knees buckle under my weight and I press my hands into the table to hold myself up.

When the jelly passes and I feel like my legs can support me again and I let up on my arms and pull myself upright. Walking still feels strange, like I haven’t used my legs in a while, and I have to mentally prepare myself for each step. One foot after another I walk my way to the wall of metal doors and press my hand to one.

Ice cold.

A notion of dread fills my gut as I reach for the handle, as if I know exactly what’s going to be behind that door but that knowledge is just out of reach. I wrap my fingers around the handle and yank. The seal around the door breaks as I pull and a gush of cold air assaults me as I open the door wide.

I was right. A metal table is in there, but this one has a lumpy sheet on it. I pull the table out and the mounds under the sheet look vaguely human-shaped. I can pick out a nose, a head. Shoulders.

I reach out and take the edge of the sheet, slowly pulling it down the head of the person on the slab. I squint my eyes, afraid of what I might find. But when I reveal the face it’s intact. I stop at the neck and stare at the cold, dead face on the table. There’s something familiar in that face that I just can’t put my finger on.

Then it hits me. All of a sudden. As if a bucket of ice water was just tossed on me.

She was one of the initiates I trained. One of the few who didn’t make the cut. But they were supposed to be booted into Factionless territory. What’s she doing dead on a slab?

And what I’m I doing in a morgue?

My heart thuds in my chest and I desperately try to control my breathing. Panic creeps up quickly and I have to beat it back down. What the hell happened? Why am I in the Dauntless morgue?

I scramble to grab onto my last memory. What was the last thing I remember? I press my hand to my neck and rub the skin. Eric choking me awake because he thought I was on the heist. That he saw me. Of course he did and of course I denied it. He didn’t want me to lie to him, but how could I not? How could I tell Jeanine’s perfect pet what I was doing? I don’t even know if I really trusted him.

I bring my hand up to rub my forehead and jerk it back when something crusted scratches against my hand. I look at what’s flaking on my fingers and at first I don’t understand. Then I do: blood. Dried blood. I press my fingers to my forehead again and wince as I touch the wound. It’s not deep, but it’s raw and bloody and already scabbed? No, that can’t be possible.

My eyes scan the room looking for something reflective. All the metal doors are brushed and the windows are all tempered. Something catches my eye on a nearby sink and I scuttle over to it, grabbing the metallic container and bringing it up to my face. Its reflection is curved, spreading my face out, but I can get an idea of what I’m looking at, and it almost looks like a bullet wound. I poke at the wound, press my fingers into the bone of my forehead. It certainly looks like a bullet wound, but it’s only skin deep.

What the—

Eric.

Eric shot me.

Eric shot me after he spilled his guts about me to Jeanine. That fucking dickhead.

Wait.

Eric shot me, but I’m not dead.

I’m not, right?

I pat my body down. I feel myself. I feel present. I feel the wound in my face. I feel the cold in the air. I turn back to the table I crawled off of, half-expecting to see my body still under the sheet and I’m really standing on another plane of existence. But it’s empty. I’m here. Standing up. Wondering how the hell I got shot yet I’m still alive. It couldn’t have been a simulation dart. That would have been obvious immediately.

What the hell?

“I told you I had to make it look real. Jeanine skinning me alive wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere.”

Eric?

I turn toward the door and listen to footsteps come closer.

“How can we trust you? You’ve been in Jeanine’s pocket since we were initiates.”

Four? I have the worst headache right now. I step closer to the door. They certainly are not being quiet walking here.

“So has Madeline,” Eric responds.

“Can we discuss this after we get her body out of here? Dauntless aren’t the brightest bunch but they’re going to notice the dead body of enemy number one missing.”

Bennie? Now it’s a full blown migraine.

I take another step toward the door and rear back as it comes flying open, nearly smacking me in the face. Eric, Four, and Bennie stand in the doorway staring at me while I stand in the morgue staring at them with a hole-shaped scratch on my face.

My head feels like it’s going to explode.

I squint against the pain, double over, grab a waste paper basket, and proceed to eject my breakfast.

“Good to see you too, Madeline,” Eric says, his voice sounding like an echo with my head in a metal bucket.

I spit the rest of the bile out and pull my head out. Heat swims around my ears, heating up my mouth, and I look back and forth between the three of them, my eyes narrowed.

“Glad to see you come around,” Four says and I look toward him. “That serum’s been known to cause muscle weakness. People have had trouble just sitting up after getting injected.”

I look back over to Eric and he has this sardonic smirk on his face. Not like the mask, but something jocular. Like we’re flinging jokes at each other. So I step up to him and fling my fist at his jaw, sending him reeling back. He grabs his face and laughs, rubbing his jaw.

“I may have deserved that,” he says with a chuckle.

“You shot me, asshole,” I say. “Not shot at. Shot.” I point to my forehead. “In the head.”

“Bo, it had to look real. It was the only way we were getting you out of there,” Bennie says.

I look between the three of them. “We?”

“We’ll explain later. We have to get out of here. Now,” Eric says as he tries to grab my arm to lead me out of the room but I lurch away. When I do he rolls his eyes and clenches his teeth.

“You can trust him, Bo.”

I turn to look at Bennie, incredulity smeared across my face. “You just warned me about staying away from him.”

Bennie shoots a look to Eric before looking back at me. “I was wrong. Now let’s go.”

I look back to Eric and he holds my gaze, but I don’t know what it means. The paranoid part of me says this is all a trick. But the rational part of me says Eric just helped me fake my own death. He can’t really be all that bad.

Four leads the way out, Bennie close behind. Eric doesn’t grab for my arm again, but he motions me in front of him and I go, braving my back to him. Instead of stabbing it he presses his fingers lightly into the small of my back and sparks light up my skin, warm up my spine. In that nanosecond of touch I feel safer than I’ve ever felt. And I feel so much freer.

My god, I feel light as air as I run down the corridor after Four and Bennie. Like with just a step I could fly. I’m finally free. The burden I’ve been carrying has been lifted and now it’s just me. Jeanine and Max and Kai all think I’m dead. I can literally do anything now without worrying someone will find out.

Until Dauntless realizes their short a corpse.

We dash out a back door and run straight for the wastes, the winter wind biting into my skin. I’m covered, but not enough, and the longer we run the number my legs get, the more frozen my hands become. We stop at an alley tucked between two crumbling buildings that used to reach toward the sky, and waiting for us is a pile of clothes. Warm clothes. To the touch warm. When me, Bennie, and Four take what’s on the pile I see a small metal container with glowing embers inside. Someone left us heated clothes.

Then I realize there’s nothing for Eric. I turn around to him and frown, the moonlight lighting up his face. His calm face. Like this is just another day at Dauntless. 

“You got it?” Bennie asks, but I keep my eyes on his face. I don’t know what she’s talking about. 

Eric nods. “I’ll take care of it.” He looks down at me and this time when he puts his hands on my arms I don’t pull away. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“What are you taking care of?” The duh moment makes its way to my brain as the words leave my mouth. The empty slab I just left behind. “What are you taking care of it with?” I amend, my eyes narrowing.

“I’ll make do,” he says with a humorless smile. “Once clean-up is done I’ll come back out.” He shakes his head and this time when he smiles he’s amused. “What the fuck have I done?”

I smile back, pride swelling within me. Pride and a whole hell of a lot of questions. “You made the difficult decision. The right one.”

“I hope so,” he says as he grabs my face and plants a kiss on my lips.

I grab his face in return, running my thumbs along his jawline, and savor this moment. 

“We don’t have all night,” Four mutters and Eric and I break apart.

“Eat shit, Four,” Eric responds, his face deadpan.

Good to know whatever just happened with me those two are still at each others’ throats. Eric gives me one last look before he runs back toward Dauntless headquarters, leaving me with Bennie and Four. I turn to them and glare at them both.

“Okay. Spill. What the fuck just happened?”

Bennie grabs the sleeve of my overstuffed jacket and guides me along the mottled street. We amble along, dodging chunks of cement and jagged pieces of rebar along the way. Part of me wants to keep running just to stay warm. The other part of me has a feeling we’re walking for a reason and I hate running in the cold. So I just keep my mouth shut and wait for Bennie to fill in the gaps.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” Bennie says with a sigh.

“We’ll be walking for a while,” Four adds. “Might as well.”

Fabric swishes as Bennie shrugs and for a second it’s just our feet crunching over debris as we walk. When she finally speaks it’s with resigned determination.

“Four ran into Eric while he was transporting you. Caught him in the hallway. Eric told him to come with him.”

I look over to Four and his face is barely visible in the dark. “And you listened?”

A laugh sounding more like a cough escapes his throat. “Not a chance.”

“After they bitch at each other Eric throws back the sheet to show your face,” Bennie says

“You looked dead. You were gray. You had a bullet hole in your forehead,” Four adds.

I poke at my sore skin. “Still do.”

“Then Eric says you’re going to wake up. That it wasn’t an actual bullet but more like a heavy duty tranq.”

“I’ll eat my boot if you believed him,” I say and I see the shadow of Four shakes his head.

“No.”

“So how did you end up going along with it?”

“Eric threatens him,” Bennie says. “Eric knew it was Four he was fighting on the train.

“The danger of being in Dauntless. You learn other people’s fighting techniques. I’m sure Eric would have known you with a single punch.”

“Absolutely,” I say.

“He said he’d haul me in if I didn’t help and that if you ended up actually dying he’d kill me.”

I step over a downed lamp post. “Was is getting caught or getting killed that did it?”

Four snorts. “Eric couldn’t kill me if he tried.”

I highly doubt that, but I’ll give Four his moment.

“And you?” I ask Bennie. “How’d you get roped into all of this?”

I see her silhouette nod toward Four. “He came and got me.”

I look between them. “How long have you two known about each other?”

“A while,” they say in unison.

“Maybe I was wrong about Eric,” Bennie says and I think back to our conversation. I pull my jacket tighter around me, trying to block out the bitter chill trying to slither under my skin. “Maybe there’s some human left in him after all.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Four says. “This could all be a rouse.”

“Yeah,” I say, acquiescing to that thought. “It could be. But if it really was I’d be dead. No questions about it.”

“She’s right,” Bennie says and I stand a little straighter with her support. “The Eric we know would have put a real bullet in her head without a second thought.”

I see Four nod in my direction. “Maybe that’s a tracking device.” He must be talking about my head wound.

“You sound like me,” I say, a hint of amusement in my tone. “Paranoid about everything. You’ve been in hiding for too long.”

“I’m not ready to blow my cover just yet,” Four retorts and I hear the seriousness in his voice.

“So now what?” I say as a familiar shadowed structure rises up in front of us. I can’t even articulate how long we’ve been walking. It feels like forever.

“Now things get fun,” Bennie says and I can hear the smile in her words.

I look ahead at the structure, at the Factionless headquarters, and a weight settles back on my shoulders. I just ditched one ice queen for another. Evelyn’s face looms in my memory and I silently curse myself. I was free for our walk here. Now I’m walking into more of the same, just under a different flag. I wonder how different Evelyn actually is from Jeanine. What worries me, though, is how similar she is.


	30. 30

“What I need are spies inside of Dauntless and Erudite,” Evelyn says, looking at me from under hooded, irritated eyes. As if this is somehow my fault.

“Well, sorry I can’t be that person for you anymore, Evelyn.” I do nothing to hide my sardonic tone. “But I’ll just remind you I never, and still don’t, work for you. I work with you. I’m not one of your minions.”

Emmanuel stiffens at my words and I quickly glance at him. I don’t let my gaze linger because I didn’t necessarily mean to call him a minion. I just want to remind Evelyn that what I did for the last eight years wasn’t under her direction. It was under mine and mine alone.

“And yet here we are.”

“I can leave,” I say as I start to turn, the words ringing empty even to my own ears. Where would I go? Evelyn is the nexus of the Factionless hive and she knows it.

Four reaches for my arm at the same time Evelyn says, “Wait.”

I stand up straight and keep my eyes on Bennie, who’s sitting in a corner observing everything while Evelyn stands at my back.

“They need to be trained,” Evelyn says to my back.

“And since everyone thinks I’m dead,” I add, “I can move in and out of both factions without them having to look for me. I’m not on the run, remember. I’m just like you now.”

God, I hope not.

“And we may have another recruit,” I add, thinking of Eric.

“No, we don’t,” Four says before my sentence is even finished.

“We might,” Bennie adds to make the whole situation even more confusing.

Evelyn looks between the three of us, her eyebrows raised. “Do we or don’t we?”

“Eric Coulter,” Bennie says and every Factionless body in the room stiffens.

Looks like Eric’s reputation extends beyond the walls of Dauntless.

“I’m afraid,” Evelyn says as she picks at a nail. “If Eric were to get near one of our buildings without Dauntless protection he would be eliminated.”

“That is one name that keeps getting connected to the raids,” Emmanuel says and my heart sinks.

“I’m alive because of him,” I tell her and I do everything in my power to keep the tears back. I’ll be damned if I cry over this. “Right now he’s destroying evidence that points to my survival.” Before Evelyn can break into my thought I add,” Yes. It’s to save himself as much as it is me. But if he were really the soldier everyone thinks he is, I’d be dead. No two questions about it.”

“She’s right about that,” Four adds grudgingly. “He could have killed her. He didn’t.”

Evelyn looks back to Emmanuel and I can see the man’s jaw tense from where I stand. A couple other Factionless huddle behind them both, backs against the far wall, their arms crossed tightly over their chests, throwing me the deathiest glares they can.

“This one act doesn’t erase all he’s already done.”

Fair enough. Evelyn turns back around to look at me. “I understand. So make him the new me. What me and Emmanuel had, now I’ll have with Eric. He never steps foot into one of these buildings, but he’s still useful.”

Evelyn’s eyes jump between Four and Bennie before landing on me again. “Fine,” she says, as if she’s forcing herself to acquiesce. “As long as he understands the likelihood of him ever earning a place with us is slim to none.”

That means if everything goes to shit Eric won’t even be Factionless. He’ll be alone. Possibly hunted. No. I won’t let that happen. I don’t care what Evelyn says. If it means I forfeit the Factionless then so be it. Of course this is all hypothetical. Who knows how all of this will play out. Maybe Jeanine will recover from the rattling I gave her. 

So I nod and look down at my feet.

“He won’t be allowed here, Madeline.” Evelyn’s voice is scolding, as if I’m some kind of temperamental child.

I look back up at her and don’t bother to hide my sneer. “I heard you, Evelyn. Don’t worry. I’m not going to sneak him in through my window.”

“I’ll make sure your things are collected and get them out to you,” Bennie says to defuse the brewing tension. “I won’t let anyone destroy them.” She puts a gentle hand on my arm and gives it a squeeze. 

She’s the friend I’ve needed all along, I realize. I look over to her, at her worry-worn features, and soak them in. I feel like I’m saying goodbye and in a sense I am. I’ve been kicked out of one club. Now I have to find my way in another and my comfort zone has been rattled. As if sensing my unease, and even reading my mind, Bennie wraps me into a hug. At first I stiffen, unsure I even like the contact. Then my soldier brain, my paranoid brain, turns off and I allow my arms to wrap around her in return. I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me as just a friend. It very nearly makes me shatter.

“You can relax,” Four says. “Well, more than what you were before. At least everyone here knows what side you’re on.”

I know he means it to be reassuring, but I can’t help but think that I’m on my own side. If I were so inclined I could walk away now. The masters think I’m dead and I can wash my hands of Jeanine’s entire world. But where would I go? What’s there outside the fence? Nothing if Jeanine’s to be believed. And she’s not. But what am I going to do? Go off and explore the world on my own? No. I still only have one option: take this world and give it back to the people. Or at the very least take it away from Jeanine.

“True,” I respond. “I can sleep a little easier at night at least.”

“Assuming we can trust Eric,” Four adds as an aside. Like he couldn’t help himself but to dig the knife in a little.

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” Four gives a grudging shrug. “That’s at least a step in the right direction.”

“I think that’s enough excitement for one night,” Evelyn says as she stands up and pushes her way between me and Bennie and Four. “Go back to Dauntless. Continue doing what you’re doing and let us get our heads back on with Madeline. She’s going to need a new role in this game.”

They both hesitate, looking between me and Evelyn. She may be Four’s mom, but I think I’ve done more to earn his trust in the time I’ve known him than she has. I had a leg up in not abandoning him to an abusive father to save myself. 

“She’s right,” I say to add some solidarity to the situation. “Dauntless is going to be rattled enough. We need to be more put together than they are. And we need to plan in order to do that.”

Bennie pauses before muttering an “okay,” nodding, and turning to leave. Four gives his own little nod of truce, glances at me one more time, and follows Bennie out the door. Leaving me alone in a strange place where I’m not necessarily unwelcome, but there are no open arms involved.

“I have a bed you can have,” Evelyn says as she places a hand on my arm. I immediately stiffen and she yanks her hand away as if burned. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say, words catching on my tongue. “It’s fine. I just . . .”

“No need to explain,” Evelyn says and guides me to the back of her office, up a flight of stairs and into what looks like an attic alcove. “We’ll give you some time. But now that you’re here your involvement is imperative.”

I bob my head in an acquiescing nod.

“There are clothes in the trunk. Bathroom’s just down there.” She points to the wall, indicating it’s on the other side of it somewhere. “Rest easy. When was the last time you did that?” She gives me a small smile before walking out of my little alcove and shutting the door behind her.

I can’t even remember.

I don’t think I know how.

How can I rest easy knowing everything that’s just happened? Eric faked my death and involved himself in an underground movement he’s been working his whole life to destroy. Eric’s not the mask. At least not entirely. Not when it comes to me. But he can’t protect me and out the rest of the movement. It won’t work like that. Plus he’s not stupid. He is the new me, assuming Jeanine doesn’t purge her entire circle out of fear of infiltration.

She should be afraid. I hope her sleep is restless tonight.

I sit on the bed and feel my bones settle, aching and creaking as the weight of the day lays heavy on me. I didn’t know I could feel so free and so burdened at the same time. I pick at a piece of skin on my finger and I catch myself staring at my hand. Still the hands of youth, but marred by wear. My skin is dry and cracked at the knuckles, in some places split and crusted with blood. Callouses riddle my palms, skin flaking under the crooks of my fingers. Hang nails and split cuticles riddle my hands but I find I can’t muster any amount of caring. What will pretty hands get me? Strong, broken-in hands can more easily tear the authority down.

Still, I feel like my entire body feels like how my hands look. Worn in, battered, torn. My eyelids weigh heavy over my eyes and I decide sleep is what I desperately need. I don’t shower. Instead I shuffle to the bathroom only intending to rinse my face when I catch myself in the mirror and jerk back. The bullet hole is still plain on my forehead. How did anyone take me seriously with this thing there? Or maybe they took me seriously because I’d been shot in the head with a very real-looking bullet.

Either way I rinse the crusted blood off only to find that a decent scab had formed and it would behoove me not to rip it off. So I gently pay it dry, wincing slightly at the sting of pain it leaves behind. I amble back to the room, get changed into some night clothes, and curl up in the bed, my back to the door.

After a second’s silence I fling the blanket back off of me and walk back over to the door, double-checking the lock. Then I drag the trunk in front of the door for good measure before falling back into bed. I’m in a strange place. I really don’t know who’s on the other side of that door and I don’t want to find out when I’m asleep. I’ve had enough surprises for a while.

Despite how tired I am I find I can’t seem to fall asleep. No amount of forcing makes it any easier and my damn mind won’t turn off. I keep thinking about Eric, about Jeanine. What’s changed over in Dauntless since I rattled things. Will anything actually change outside of the inner circle? How will my disappearance be explained? Will that bitch Kai actually move up in rank? How will this change Jeanine’s plans?

So many questions and no answers and my brain just won’t shut up. I keep my eyes on the window, on the dark sky outside. Even from here, tucked inside this bedroom, I see stars twinkling in the sky. Something so incredibly peaceful amid so much chaos.

My mind wanders some more to places I don’t want it to go. My childhood. My lost childhood. Eric’s lost childhood. Interactions we had all those years ago where I noticed details that didn’t seem important at the time, but bear more significance now. Like the bandages that kept peeking out from underneath his sleeves. How he flinched when his father raised his voice. How formal his tone always was in a group setting.

Like I was any different.

No matter how I feel about all of those things, they all led me here. To this moment. I'm still alive. Jeanine thinks she's taken that from me, but she hasn't. I can still move forward with my mission. I can still get things done. I can still topple her. All is not lost. I'm just walking a different path and I have to find my way.

Right now I really need to sleep. I close my eyes and try to ignore the stinging burn on my forehead. The memory of Eric's gun barrel in my face. Hearing him rat me out to Jeanine and Max. Instead I focus on the knowledge that he didn't kill me. He saved me. He secreted me out of Dauntless and is willing to help, however reluctantly. I smile into my pillow, still keeping my eyes closed. Those thoughts won't help me fall asleep either, but at least I'll struggle with a smile.

I take a deep breath and settle into the night.


	31. 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone reads Italian, you can you start reading INSIDIOUS in Italian on Wattpad! An awesome fan offered to translate it for me because they wanted to have their friends read it. Of course I said yes! So just go to my profile, @dcompbooks, and under my Fic reading list you'll see the INSIDIOUS cover with an Italian title. Enjoy!

It shouldn't surprise me, but it does: the Factionless are pure chaos. I crawl out of my room sometime in the early morning, when people with a day ahead of them should be getting up and the rest aren't even aware of the time. I throw on the smattering of clothes left for me in a trunk at the foot of my bed and walk out into the common area. And practically rear back in surprise.

It's a hive of action, erratic and hard to keep track of. It almost reminds me of the Pit, but with the Pit came order. You knew what you were getting with Dauntless: peacocking, fighting, bickering, talking, training. It didn't deviate much from that. Here? I can barely make sense of everything. It’s far too early and I'm not nearly awake enough for this.

Thoughts of Eric cloud my mind and it's as if I see his face everywhere I look. At first I flinch, remembering only the barrel of the gun and the sound of it firing. Then all the rest comes flooding in and my heart swells. I have a nagging feeling it could all go wrong, that Eric finds himself having made a mistake. But that's Bo's paranoia built over the years thanks to Jeanine's Madeline development talking. Four and Bennie weren't looking to hang me out to dry. Eric actually saved my life and covered up my death. The world isn't after me anymore, because it thinks I'm dead.

Sparks fly in a corner I pass as saw blades cut into some kind of metal. A pipe maybe. It's hard to see with the sparks and the welder doesn't stop to give me a blow by blow of what he's doing. Over in a nook is a woman surrounded by small children. A small blackboard sits behind her and in her hand is a tiny piece of chalk. She holds up a book and points to a page, writing something on the blackboard as she speaks. A squeal of metal cutting into metal mutes the question she asks them, but they all respond in the same monotone and she nods her approval.

Factionless education. Because they're no longer allowed in Faction schools. And the children of Factionless? Forget it. Our society doesn't even recognize them as having existed at all. So this is it. A burning ignites in my chest and I start to fume before I take a handful of deep breaths through my nose to calm myself. Just more fuel for my fire. These are the reasons I'm still fighting, why I'm not giving up and running off. There's too much here going to waste.

I walk past an area with partitions and peek my head through a gap, not even thinking about being nosy. I'm too curious. I shouldn't be. I've been taught to turn my head away from these people. Now I am these people and I'm never looking away again.

Behind the partitions is a line of cots against the wall. All but two are empty and one contains a person, a younger girl. Her cheeks are flushed, a sheen of sweat coating her skin. At the foot of her bed is a bucket of snow and the woman next to her stuffs handfuls of it into bags and places them at her neck. Under her feet. On her stomach. Trying to bring down a fever.

When she's finished she takes the limp hand of the girl on the bed and sandwiches it in her own, rubbing the top of her hand. Patting it. Murmuring things to her only the incoherent girl can understand. My eyes wander the little medical area and find it sorely lacking. Only a couple of boxes of gauze, a single container holding a couple dull surgical instruments that look like they can do more harm than good. I walk over to what is surely a medicine cabinet and open it. Only a couple of bottles are inside. I pick one up and shake it and wince at the meager noise it makes. Maybe a half dozen pills are inside. I look at the label and see they're painkillers.

I don't know who to be more angry at. Jeanine for forcing this way of thinking on our society, for rejecting these people and denying them even basic medical care because they don't confirm to some rigid ideals. Or Evelyn who's more concerned with weaponry than aspirin to the point that a young girl is suffering a fever haze and who knows what else for the sake of some stolen guns. It riles my blood all over again and I vow my first mission, before anything else, is to obtain medical supplies. Decent medical supplies. I just have to get word to the crew.

The crew? Ick. No. I can't call them that. It feels so . . . bro-like. Like I should be crushing a can on my head or something. Not to mention it feels too insignificant. We're not a crew. We don't go around carousing on the weekends and party at bonfires (often). We're working to topple a dictator. That begs for something more.

I take one last look at the sick girl and her caregiver before walking out of the partition. The woman doesn't even acknowledge me. I can't say I blame her. 

I remember coming across a word during all of my research and it stuck with me. Something that incites change, that gets people riled up to make a difference. And we need to make a difference. Firebrand. It's what I've been since I was sixteen and getting my test results. The world needs to change and I'm willing to set it ablaze to get that done. Apparently so is Four, Bennie, and Eric. It's not every day people help you fake your own death. Those are people worth keeping around. Firebrands. We'll turn the world into flame and light Jeanine up with it.

But first, medicine. I stalk toward Evelyn's office, her highness's throne room where I know she's squatting. No sense in waiting. Time to get the ball rolling.

She jolts when the door goes banging open and I cringe with the noise. I didn’t actually mean to do that and I snap my hand out to stop it from crashing back closed. My bad. I don’t apologize, but I look apologetic. I’ll give her that.

“What can I help you with, Madeline? I didn’t expect to see you so soon.” 

She puts her pencil down and pushes back from the desk to stand up. She’s a slight woman, even shorter than I am and nowhere near as fit, but her presence speaks volumes.

“No rest for the wicked,” I say without missing a beat. “I want to get medical supplies from Dauntless. They’ll have the best stash and it’ll only need to be one stop.”

A tired smile pulls its way across her face. It would be almost warm if it weren’t for the ice of her eyes.

“That’s very noble of you,” she says. “But it’s not a priority for us. We have what we need to get by. Now we need to prepare ourselves for a coming war.”

My eyelids lower a fraction, just enough to let her know I think her answer is bullshit. That is, before I call her on it. “Let me rephrase. I’m going to get medical supplies from Dauntless because the people you’re so concerned about wouldn’t make it through an outbreak of the sniffles let alone survive infection. You want my help it’s on my terms, not yours. It’s not just guns you need to prepare for war. Not just fighting and training. If they’re thwarted by a paper cut they’re certainly not going to survive a battle with an army as organized as Dauntless.”

The muscle in her jaw twitches as she clenches and grinds her teeth together. Evelyn’s not stupid. She has to know I’m right. She has to know that it’s not just soldiers that would benefit from even mediocre medical care. But she pauses too long. Stares at me too hard. I wouldn’t put it past her to use force in order to get me to do what she wants me to do. I can only fend off so many Factionless. Luckily she takes the rational route.

“Okay. We can relay the message out—“

“I’ll just go in and get it. It’ll be much faster.”

For a second Evelyn looks horrified, but then she composes herself. “I can’t have you waltzing back into Dauntless headquarters. You could expose everything. You’ll be putting Eric and Bennie at risk. And Tobias.”

I scoff at her audacity. “Don’t pretend that now you care about Four after you ditched him with Marcus for all those years to save your own skin.”

She steps toward me, her eyes trained on mine, her glare piercing. “Don’t you presume to think you know a single thing about the decisions I’ve made.”

I’ll give her credit. She has sack. But we both know I’ll snap her like a twig. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I waste none of my time thinking about you.”

I turn my back on her and walk away without waiting for a response. When I'm to the door I say, without turning around, "I'll let you know when I'm back."

I grab a bag on my way out and stuff some food and canteens into the pack. Dauntless's world is segmented. I only know the comings and goings of my little world, of training and subterfuge. But there are more cogs in the machine and I need to know how they work. I need to see all the hands on the clock before I decide where to slip in.

It's still early. I'll be observing for a while. And I'll need to observe for days if I want to get schedules down. But that's only if I'm patient. Which I'm not. Not anymore. I don't need to bide my time. I just need to wait for an opportunity.

Hours into my reconnoitering, when the sun is high in the sky yet it offers no heat, I see her. She's not very good at blending in, but she does a job at not being noticed. Her gray skirt flutters in the frigid breeze and I'm almost positive I see her shiver even from this distance. I'm not so far away that I can't see her brown hair or how she stares at the Dauntless building. But I can't see her face and I desperately want to find out who this woman is who's spying on Dauntless. This Abnegation woman so far outside of her comfort zone.

I'm on the fifteenth floor of a building and I make my way down the stairs quickly, afraid that I may lose her once I'm back on the ground. But I come out the door and she's still where I left her, her back to me, her eyes only for Dauntless.

I make my way slowly over to her, careful not to step on anything that would make any kind of noise. I skitter behind broken pieces of cement, crumpled walls of buildings. She hasn't even so much as twitched a look over her shoulder.

I maneuver behind another piece of broken wall and I find myself looking up at her from just off to her side. I can see her face, her pale skin, the worry lines worn in around her eyes, the laugh lines on the sides of her mouth. This isn't a young woman, but she's not old either. Maybe old for Dauntless, but not Abnegation.

The jacket she wears is thin, too thin for the cold around us, and I see her shiver again. Surely even Abnegation would want to protect themselves from the cold. That can't be too selfish of a thought, not dying from exposure. Then again, maybe it is.

My eyes bore into the side of her face and I duck further down behind the wall. She looks familiar somehow, like I've seen her before. Or someone that looks a lot like her. It's like Evelyn and Four. She looked familiar in an abstract way, but it wasn't until it was pointed out to me that I made the connection. Maybe it's the same here. Is she someone's parent? Has to be.

Good to know not all Abnegation are so strict to the rules.

I move out from behind the clump of cement I'm squatting behind and quietly walk toward the woman. If she notices me she doesn't show it. No flinching, no blinking. Just staring at the Dauntless headquarters building.

"What are you doing here?" I ask to her back and then I do expect her to flinch.

I don't expect her to wing her fist out and me having to duck it. And she doesn't stop with a swing. She brings her other fist around and I dodge it, thrusting my hand into her shoulder and knocking her off balance. But she keeps coming.

What the hell?

I stay strictly on defense, bewildered and nearly dumbfounded with the fight this woman is putting up. Like a switch turned on and now she can't find the off button.

"Stop." I say as I bat her booted foot away but she keeps coming.

She sticks to the same handful of moves and before long I can guess her pattern before she throws her next fist. In between move number four and move number five I make my own move, barreling into her, my arm around her chest, bringing her to the ground.

"I said stop."

I'm barely out of breath, but the woman under me is gasping. She's definitely older, most definitely someone's mom. Someone in Dauntless? And where the hell did an Abnegation learn those moves? Unless she's a transfer out . . .

"Who are you?"

Anger is rife on her face, but when she speaks her voice is almost calm. Placid. As if she's had years of reining in any lack of self control she might have had.

"None of your business."

I frown while my mouth quirks up into a little smile. "Not a very Abnegation answer. And those weren't very Abnegation moves. Now who are you?"

She still doesn't answer me, but no matter. Slowly, ever so slowly, the pieces click into place. A Dauntless transfer from years before, getting herself out of the faction only to watch her child dive back into it. Stiffs don't make it a habit of coming over from the gray side. I've only known two and this woman is definitely not Evelyn.

"Prior," I whisper and watch the unguarded emotions ripple across her face. What finally settles there is an angry fear, her eyes shining. "You're Natalie Prior."


	32. 32

"If I agree that I'm her, will you get off of me?" she asks and I pull myself away from her.

I stand up and watch the disgruntled look cross her face as she sits up and pulls herself to her feet, dusting off her bland gray skirt and retying her hair into a knot at the back of her head. Honestly I liked her better with a little more mess. She looked more human. Now, as she stands there staring at me, her arms at her sides, she looks like just another Abnegation drudge. Someone who blends into the background. And can secretly kick some ass.

"What are you doing here?" I ask again as I cross my arms over my chest. "You seem pretty far from your duties."

"As do you," she responds and I quirk my eyebrow up. Touche, Natalie.

"I'm right where I need to be," I say, a small smirk forming on my mouth.

"As am I," she says and it takes everything in me to not roll my eyes.

"Stop. Whatever you're doing is outside the faction norm. We both know that. The question is why?"

Of course, she's not under any obligation to tell me anything. Deep down, buried in her past, she's Dauntless. It's certainly in her to tell me to go fuck myself. But that's been beaten out of her. I hope not literally. The doctrine of Abnegation would be thick with her after all these years and her desire to not be selfish could rightly outweigh her Dauntless instincts. Then again she did put up a solid fight. For a Stiff.

Natalie keeps her hands fisted at her sides, her knuckles bone white. Her jaw clenches, but her eyes don't waver. She stares me down like she's begging for a fight.

"Promise me you won't hurt her. I have just as much on you as you do on me right now."

The barter surprises me, but not a whole lot. The will of a mother protecting her child can be intense. And then there's Evelyn.

I smile. "You have nothing on me because I am nothing." She frowns and cocks her head to the side. "Jeanine had me killed."

Natalie's eyes squint and she tries hard to fight a smile but doesn't succeed. "That seems to have worked in your favor."

I nod. "So I promise."

"Beatrice," she says and she flinches at the name. I heard about the Priors and their children at the Choosing Ceremony. Both Abnegation, both defected. It's nearly unheard of and it only fanned the flames of the rumors swirling around about the faction, how people are abused to stay in line. Somehow, deep in my gut, I know this woman isn't abusive and she wouldn't allow anyone to abuse her children. She's far too much of a fighter for that. Still, she had two children that she couldn't indoctrinate hard enough. "She's in there," she says as she looks over her shoulder toward the Dauntless building.

"Tris," I tell her. Correct her. "I helped train her. I understand she passed initiation."

I watch the woman's shoulders sag and all of her held-in stress is let go. She presses her fingers into her forehead and rubs, as if easing a headache. 

"Dauntless isn't the right place for someone like her," Natalie says as she looks back to me.

"It's fitting enough if she passed initiation. She's not a complete mismatch." I say it like it'll help ease her mind. Like it'll convince her that her daughter is okay. But there's something else there she's not saying, something more than just standard worry about her little girl falling in with the roughnecks. "She's strong. She's a fighter."

Natalie nods and looks down at her boots. Fingers swipe quickly at her cheeks, but not fast enough. When she looks back up tears trail down her cheeks, but she smiles anyway.

"I know," she says. "She's always been so . . . strong-willed."

As if a light has been flipped on inside my head and all these pieces of a puzzle flash in my mind's eye. An Abnegation defecting to Dauntless, Tris's will to get stronger, faster, better. Her inability to take no for an answer. Her questions. Always her questions. She doesn't fall in line. She's not really a solider. She's like . . . me.

"She's Divergent, isn't she?"

Natalie's head snaps up and her eyes go wide. What little she did retain from Dauntless didn't include a poker face. I watch her mouth try to form words and fail. Little gasping sounds escape her throat, but she doesn't say much else of anything.

"No. She's not in a good place then." I look over at the Dauntless building and stare as it for a moment, taking in its dilapidated details, before looking back at Natalie. "But she's not alone. I can make sure she's looked out for."

She straightens her skirt, brushes it down with her hands despite it not needing it. "I'm sure she can look after herself."

I nod and my eyebrow quirks up of its own volition. "Indeed," I say while letting the silence between us bloat. "But there's a lot more going on in that faction than soldiering and I think you know it. That's why you're out here."

Her eyes are watery and piercing. I can nearly see the gears grinding in her head. Remembering, probably. Connecting dots that can only be done with hindsight. How everything always looks so clear when you're looking back at it. Plus, just as there are rumors about Abnegation, surely there are rumors about Dauntless. Jeanine may just be better at spinning them. Or silencing them. Dauntless is her little pet, after all. And she's looking to topple Abnegation. She's the devil on our society's shoulders.

"A storm's coming," Natalie says. "And she's out of my reach. I have to warn her. We need to hide--" 

She catches herself mid-sentence, cutting herself off like she's said too much. If I were anyone else she probably would have said too much. But it's me and I'm a dead girl walking. I'm Divergent and Jeanine's right hand and dead and a Factionless soldier. I don't think she can say enough to me.

"You need to arm," I correct her. "If you really need to see Tris they'll probably be loading trucks with supplies around the other side of the compound." That much I can offer. Welcome to Dauntless! Here's some grunt work. "But when you're done don't play dumb. You'll end up drowning in the rain."

Without a word or an additional head movement or anything she starts walking away in the direction I pointed her. After a few paces she stops and turns back to me. "Where can I find umbrellas?"

Factionless don't have any kind of secret code. At least not that I've been made aware of yet. But I don't need to be in on the code to understand what Natalie's asking.

"The ruins are never short of them."

What I do know is there is always someone out patrolling, watching. Factionless are good at relaying communication quickly. Word travels fast among the degenerates. And all Natalie will have to do is find someone. That much I'm sure of.

She turns back around and walks away. She doesn't seem to care about anyone who could potentially be looking out their windows right now. Or she knows something I don't. Maybe those are just empty eyes in the building. She doesn't start ducking and dodging until she's closer to the structure and then I watch her disappear into the gray, ruined landscape entirely. A Divergent mother with a Divergent daughter in the Divergent-murdering capital of the society. I really need to see more of our factions. I feel like I'm missing so much. This kind of rebellion shouldn't shock me, not if I think about it. But it shocks me to see it after hiding my own for so long. I'm almost jealous of Natalie's brazenness. I trained so hard for so long to be covert and here she is, just traipsing along.

To be that unafraid.

Now my own mission and all of a sudden the chill in the air isn't so cold anymore and my palms get incredibly sweaty. Doubt clouds my mind. What if Evelyn is right? What if I'm caught? And all for some aspirin. Is this really worth it?

Then I remember the girl on the cot in a fever haze, sweating and shivering for her life while the woman, maybe her mom, looks on helplessly. I think of all the casualties we'll be facing in a coming war and how impotent we'll be with nothing to treat even the most basic of wounds.

My rational brain takes over and my beating heart levels out. I don't feel the shudder in my chest quite so hard anymore. I start actually thinking things through and I know I can be in and out of the faction in minutes. I know where there are and aren't cameras, I know how they work. I know where the infirmary is. I know when the Pit is the least crowded. I know these things.

Still, doubt is an insidious thing that won't get the hell out of my head.

So I wait. It’s nearly three a.m. by the time I’m ready to crawl back into my old home. I’ve barely been gone a day. Barely been dead a day. Yet here I am, sneaking back in. Some would call me crazy. The rest would probably call me crazy too. I’d say I’m an opportunist. See an inch, take a mile.

At the back of the building is a rarely-used door. It’s hinges are rusted and there actually isn’t a knob on the outside of it. But if you have the right tools you can finagle the door open and enter a hallway that few people ever use at the best of times. This early, or late, no one will use it. At least I hope. All I have on me is a knife and hand-to-hand combat is incredibly messy. I’d rather not have to inconvenience myself like that right now.

There is no light back here, but thankfully the moon is out. Unthankfully the building’s obstructing a lot of the light. But not all of it. With my eyes adjusted there’s just enough for me to work by and I’m finagling the door open and sliding in through the smallest crack I can make. 

Light isn’t much better in the hardly-used hallway yet I find I can find my way to where I need to go while passing under dim, flickering lights that are off more than on. Someone should really check on the wiring on those. It could be dangerous. Then again what’s a little electrocution among friends?

Three a.m. is a good dead time in Dauntless. Party time is done and the few stragglers who are left behind wouldn’t pass any kind of sobriety test. I’m dressed in all black, just not Dauntless black, but I’m counting on no one noticing that little detail.

I don’t come across another human being until I reach the Pit and even then, like I figured, it’s only a couple of stragglers walking in lines that aren’t even close to straight. They won’t remember getting into bed in the morning let alone coming across me. Still, I stick to the shadows, survey the room. I keep my head down as someone stumbles a little too close to me for comfort, but I might as well not exist. Only when I’m sure I’m little more than a shadow to anyone who’s still left do I slink around the Pit to the other side and out the door to the training area.

When I come to the corridors I start to get a little nervous. I’m completely exposed with nowhere to hide. And I’m totally recognizable. It’s not like I’d be able to just face the wall and not look at anyone if they passed by. Like that wouldn’t be suspicious. And I have no idea what story was told about me after my sudden departure. If Max and Jeanine told everyone I was dead then there’d be some serious explaining needed if someone found me wandering the halls.

I pick up my pace, but make sure to step lightly. The boots I'm wearing aren't exactly stealthy and the floors are polished to a high, waxy sheen. Even Dauntless has cleanliness standards. I'm down near the training area and my heart's thundering in my ears. It's been too easy. Even for the middle of the night I should have come across someone. I've been spotted and I'm being watched. That has to be it.

Still, I push on. The infirmary only has a couple lights on, but it's more than enough for me to see by. I start with the medicine cabinet and take enough to not be conspicuous. The last thing I want to do is leave the place a mess. I don't want anyone to know I've been here. Or anyone who isn't supposed to be here has been here. So I take from the back and pull everything forward, making it still look full when I've taken half their stash of everything. By the time anyone notices I'll be long gone and they'll just think they had a rough month.

I grab some surgical implements, dressings, antibacterial ointment. Iodine. Such a simple thing, but oh so effective. I grab a bunch. When my pack is nearly full I hear the squeak of a shoe on polished floor. It's one of those noises that I'm not sure if my on-edge brain imagined it or if it really happened.

Slowly I close my pack, trying to make as little noise as possible. My hands shake as I try to button the flap and I have to talk to myself, remind myself that there are few things I can't get myself out of. Everything's going to be okay.

Another step and I crouch down as the squeak sounds again. Definitely not imagining it. I fling the bag over my shoulders and I hear the tap of soles on stone. Whoever it is isn't trying to hide. They know I'm here and they know I know it.

So I stand up and take a deep breath.

Without even turning around I hear, "The fuck are you doing here?" and my blood stands still.


	33. 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to give a big thank you to everyone reading and giving me kudos and leaving wonderful comments on my story! I'm glad you all are enjoying it so much! It really makes me happy to get notifications that someone else has left a comment or shown some love on my work. :)

I spin around and practically deflate, my anxiety and nerves fizzling out like I’d just been doused in water.

“That’s how you say hello?” I ask Eric as he stands there scowling, his arms crossed over his chest.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he growls as he walks over to me and grabs me by the elbow. He tries to take a couple of steps, but I dig in my heels and wrench my arm out of his grasp.

“You’re the idiot if you think I’d just stop doing what I’m doing. They need medicine—“

Eric steps back up to me, his nostrils flaring, and the anger in his eyes cuts my words off in my throat. “Use that head of yours, Madeline. You really think Dauntless isn’t on lockdown right now?”

“I jimmied the back door and snuck in without a problem,” I say, a small smile on my lips in an attempt to diffuse the tension between us, but I only succeed in making the red in Eric’s neck crawl up higher.

“Jeanine’s recalled everyone’s sims. She wants everything reviewed to make sure no one was missed. That she doesn’t have any more moles in her ranks, or anywhere in Dauntless. Your “death,”“ Eric says using air quotations, “has gotten three more people killed for something that could have been a computer glitch.”

A lump forms in my throat and I find it really hard to swallow all of a sudden. No way am I worth three lives. I’m not even worth a single one for all that I’ve done. All the scheming and planning and backstabbing. And now, in twenty-four hours, all my planning has gotten people killed. How many more in the next twenty-four? I wanted to make Jeanine paranoid before Eric put a bullet in my head. Looks like I succeeded.

Ice cold washes across my skin, across my cheeks. I feel all the blood leave my head and Eric brings his face closer to mine, as if to belabor the point. “And me. If you’re caught, what do you think will happen to me, Madeline? It was my gun and my bullet and my disposal of your body. And you’re alive? You think I still would be?”

I secretly wished I’d run into Eric on my little mission. I envisioned him happy to see me, happy to know that I’m safe and still part of the mission I dragged him into. Except that was my stupid little girl brain talking. The one filled with fantasy and sentiment who thought she could have something of a normal life and a normal relationship in a normal world when all of that is anything but. Now I want nothing more than to curse myself for my own stupidity and my own shortsightedness. I want to curse Evelyn for being right.

Without warning and without bidding, tears blur my eyes and track down my cheeks in a horrible display of weakness and I angrily swipe them away. Eric’s hand settles on my arm, his grip firm but not ungentle. I feel the press of every finger into my skin, the heat it sears straight into my bones. I’d do more than curse myself if I were the cause of his death.

“Madeline, look at me.” His voice is firm, but not stern. His tone commanding. I couldn’t not look if I tried. So I meet his gaze, his piercing blue eyes, and I hold his stare. “Suck it up,” he says, his voice monotone. “Grab your bag and get the fuck out of here.”

Heat melts the ice on my skin and my cheeks flare. Shame lands heavy on me and the steam of it emanates from my pores. I look away, look down, grab my pack and without another word I walk back toward the way I came.

“And next time,” he says to my back and I only slow myself down. I don’t stop walking. “Use the channels.”

The Factionless system of communication. Got it. But I say nothing. I just keep walking, my head hanging down. My heart thuds loudly in my chest, so loudly I think I’ll wake up the entire faction. Instead I power forward, my steps light and quiet, the Dauntless building around me empty and silent for the night.

Which means I hear the footsteps behind me. I hear Eric’s breathing as he tries to catch up. I know it’s him. I recognize his steps from the infirmary, and I’d know the way his breath sounds from anywhere. What I don’t know is why he’s coming after me after everything he just said. I’m such a liability right now. Why make it worse? Probably because he’s not. He’s probably following me to make sure he locks the door behind me to keep me from sneaking back in.

I come up on the door and can still hear his footsteps echoing steadily behind me. I throw my hands up in resignation as I come upon the door, defeated. Utterly defeated.

“I’m out, Eric. I heard you loud and clear.”

But before I can put my hands down he grabs one of them and spins me around, pinning me against the wall. The pack rests awkwardly against my back, a huge lump underneath me, but I barely mind it. Eric hovers over me, our noses nearly touching, my face cradled in his hand. He’s breathing deeply as his eyes rove across my forehead, my cheeks, falling on my lips. His chin rubs against my jawbone and my thudding heart thuds a little louder.

He says nothing. Instead his lips smash against mine, our teeth clacking together, but neither of us bring attention to it. Neither of us care. We devour each other in this moment, desperate and afraid. Like there’s no tomorrow. And knowing how deep I’m in, and how far I’ve dragged Eric down, there may never be a tomorrow. So we live now.

“Use the channels,” he breaths into my mouth and I want to swallow him whole.

I can only nod at his words and he kisses me one last time, a lingering, weighty thing that’ll forever impress its memory on my mouth. Before I melt, before I lose even more reason than I obviously already have, I pull away, open the door behind me, and slide myself out of Dauntless, my eyes lingering on Eric’s face as the door closes him out and shuts me in the dark. An image that will be forever seared in my mind.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why didn’t I think ahead? Why such a ridiculous lapse in judgment? It’s like my sudden death has completely rattled my mind. And I tell myself this like I should be surprised. As if what’s happened to me in the last twenty-four hours is something normal and something I can just work through, like stubbing my toe.

As I make my way through the ruins I go from chastising myself to questioning my sanity back to berating myself, but for completely different reasons. In eight years I haven’t allowed myself to rest. I couldn’t rest. Letting my guard down meant dying. I mean, look what happened with Eric. Guard came down and I got “killed.” Even Evelyn was surprised that I was up and running so quickly. Old habits die hard, I guess. Maybe I need to try harder.

A patrol tries to stop me about a mile and a half from the Factionless headquarters and I bat them off. They don’t let up, persistent things, no matter how hard I swat them away. And it’s not like they aren't trying. Two of them are even bigger than me and it takes me throwing one of them into a wall, my forearm pressing into their throat, for them to back off. I guess word hasn't quite gotten around yet about me, but I manage to persuade them. A look in my pack doesn't hurt my cause either.

I say nothing to no one when I walk into the building and beeline straight for the medical area. The pathetic medical area that's little more than a handful of cots and some sheets for partitions. The woman and the girl are still there, the girl not shivering so much anymore. Not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign.

Without a word I set my pack on one of the beds and start unloading it, giving some semblance of order to the stash I’m giving to the Factionless. As I’m elbow-deep in my pack I feel eyes on me. When I look up the woman is looking at me, a frown just barely brushing her forehead. Like ninety-five percent of her is otherwise occupied, but this fraction of her is just the slightest bit interested in what I’m doing.

She says nothing and the next bottle I pull out is a bottle of aspirin. I stare at it as it rests in my hand before looking up at the woman, then over at the sleeping girl.

I point to the girl, the bottle rattling as I move. “She still have a fever?”

The woman nods and I watch her clench the girl’s hand a little harder. I twist the cap off the bottle and shake a handful of aspirin into my palm. I reach my hand out and at first the woman just stares at me as if I have six heads. It takes some urging, but I get her to reach out her hand and I drop the pills into her possession.

“Give her two every six hours.” Remembering what I’ve already put away I get up and move over to a cabinet where I rummage through the number of bottles I’ve stuffed in there. I find the antibiotics and dump half a dozen into my hand. I pass these off to the woman too. “And one of those every twenty-four hours. It should help.”

I hope. Assuming there’s nothing more serious wrong with her. But it’s a start. The woman thanks me, a bewildered look on her face, and I finish putting my haul away before scurrying out of the medical area. The awe with which the woman looks at me is just downright uncomfortable and the sooner I can get out of there, the better.

I stop by the kitchens to grab some food before heading back to my room. No surprise Evelyn is nowhere to be found. This late, if she’s a normal human being without any missions to run, she’s asleep. I grab a pencil and find a blank piece of paper on her desk where I jot her a quick note:

_I need my rest. Please no one bother me until I come out. M_

She doesn’t need a time frame. When I make my way out of my room I’ll come out. Can’t say what condition I’ll be in. But I should have taken advantage of this when I first got here. I shouldn’t have gone to Dauntless. That was reckless and stupid and while nothing bad came of it, it could have been so much worse. I’ll not do that again. Not when my head isn’t clear. Not when I haven’t properly unwound. And I have some serious unwinding to do.

I shove the food in my face without even tasting it and quickly get undressed. As if hit by a truck exhaustion overwhelms me and I find it nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. My mind tries to stay on, tries to keep whirring. Keep thinking about what could have gone wrong tonight. What Natalie is doing with her daughter. What Eric’s doing to keep his front up. But not even my ceaseless thinking can keep my eyes open.

And I don’t fight it. Instead I let them drift closed and I’m barely aware of my bones settling before I drift off to sleep.


	34. 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting near the end, guys! Only three more chapters after this, an epilogue, and a short story and we're done! Let the countdown begin . . .

I haven't seen him in weeks and I'm like a druggie looking for a fix. I've been using the channels and he's been responding back, but that's the extent of our communication. Bennie and Four have been in and out as the Factionless assault ramps up. A rising tide of rebellion about to wash over our world. Of course neither are incredibly close with Jeanine.

Eric, on the other hand . . .

As far as Jeanine's concerned Eric is still firmly loyal, blind even. And doubly as ruthless. Despite his helping me the raids on the Factionless have increased, and the casualties along with them, with Eric at the helm. We've always had advanced warning, and many of the raids have occurred in scantily occupied areas of the wastes. But when Factionless are found, and sometimes those fruitless raids turn to hunts, the result is brutal and Eric's name drips from the tongues of survivors.

"He can fake it," I tell Bennie, who stands at my side as she recounts the latest raid.

I see strands of her hair flick back and forth out of the corner of my eye as she shakes her head no. "Not like I can. Not if he wants to live."

I whip my head over to face her, a frown on my face. "He's not convincing anyone. They all hated him before. Now they want his head on a pike."

"He's convincing Jeanine and that's what matters right now." My fists clench at my sides and despite all her reason I still want to slap her. "He lets us know when and where and we do what we can. But if he were to constantly raid empty buildings it would draw too much suspicion."

My teeth grind together and an ache shoots through my jaw. I rub my fingers into my temple and keep my eyes on Bennie as her sad eyes stare me down. "So we play gods with who we help and who we don't."

"It's a war, Bo." I nearly flinch, but not at her confirming what I already knew; at her use of my Dauntless name. She's the only one who still uses it and it's like picking a scab every time she says it, the wound never healing. "We can't save everyone."

I pull myself up, away from the table I was leaning on. Her words coat a sour taste in my mouth. She's not wrong, but to hear it stated so plainly it sounds wrong. It sounds awful. That we'd willingly sacrifice anyone for any cause. That Eric's just doing his job, protecting the rest of them. That's not what they see and it's hard for me to see it that way too. But Bennie's right. We can't save everyone and I'll never be able to get that dirt off of my skin as a result.

"Let's go. Some fresh air will do you good. Too many fumes in this place." Bennie waves her hand in front of her face as if trying to shoo away smoke.

I blink and take in my surroundings as if slapping myself out of a daze. It's not like I haven't been out of the building since I last saw Eric, but it has been about a week. That's how my missions have gone. Go in, complete the objective, and come back into hiding. I can't risk anyone seeing me or even getting wind that I may be alive. The fewer the people who know, the better, and the longer my secret stays secret.

But now it's been about a week since my last mission and I'm starting to feel closed in. My eyes see the shadowed corners of the Factionless building a little too well, and each time I cross paths with a beam of light I wince. I keep the curtains drawn in my own room, adding to the cave-like feel of my surroundings. I don't even hear the thrum of metalwork or children screaming or people simply living. I've hammered it down into ambient noise that succeeds only in lulling me to sleep. I've become comfortable in a short period of time and my heart rate amps up just a little bit at the thought of going outside.

I don't feel like it.

Except I have to. We're supposed to meet with Johanna in Amity closer to sundown. I look at my watch and realize that's in barely enough time for us to get there if we run. Bennie's dragging me outside and she's going to make me work. I scowl at her and inwardly smile. I have to admit not constantly working out feels a little nice. Resting. But I know I need to keep moving. Keep active. Otherwise I'll get sloppy and that'll get people dead.

"Don't give me that. You enjoy these outings more than I do."

A smile tumbles through my scowl as she grabs onto my sleeve and drags me toward the door. I slide my arms into my jacket as I walk and zip it up as I slide out of the closing crack of the door behind her. It's still winter in old Chicago, but the wind isn't as bitter. The days aren't as arctic. It's a small consolation as a gust of wind blows frozen air and speckles me with tiny shards of ice. But anyone who lives here can tell you they feel it. Spring is coming. We can feel it in our bones.

I keep up with her just fine as we jog along the snow-packed roads to Amity. Luckily they're our closest faction by way of geography, living on the outskirts of our society like the Factionless. Except Amity's accepted. They provide us with the bulk of our food. If it weren't for them we'd all starve. Luckily they're too peace-loving and kind to use that tidbit to their advantage.

The setting winter sun lights up the sky a deceptive flame as we come upon the outer edge of the faction, our cold-wracked gasps loud in the quiet, our breath misting thick in the air in front of us. My nose runs and I rub my sleeve across my face, my nose and cheeks painfully numb from the cold. I pull a hat over my head and tuck my hair up underneath. Amity's done good to stay away from Dauntless's drama so if they do know about me it's only vaguely, and the chances of me being recognized are next to none.

I'm still not taking any chances and I bury myself in my clothes, wrapping them tight around me as we walk over to the barn that also doubles as Johanna's office. It makes me twitchy that there's no one out. It shouldn't surprise me, the farmers not being outside in the snow. Everyone's inside, tending greenhouses and animals and whatever else they do here. But I'm just not used to not having any guards. Even the Factionless were constantly on patrol. Here? It's quiet.

The sound of a fist hitting wood when Bennie knocks ricochets through the quiet, echoing around us in a painfully obvious sign. I take a deep breath, trying to talk myself down from the mental ledge I'm hovering on. Amity is the one place I'm safe. I'm unknown, they're not targeted, they don't involve themselves. I'm safe. As safe as I can be. And it's such a foreign concept still. I don't know if I'll ever break that habit.

Johanna answers the door a minute later, a smile exposing her teeth, not a hint of deception anywhere on her placid face. She steps aside to let us in and we both scuttle into the warmth, the damp air turned up by stabled horses kicking at the hay-covered ground. I scrunch my nose at the smell, but it doesn't take long to settle. To not smell all that bad.

"Follow me," Johanna says as she closes the barn door and walks farther into the barn.

It's dark in here, but my eyes adjust quickly to the slivers of light lingering between the slats of wood. Lanterns hang at intervals along the stables and I can hear the horses wicker and snuffle in their stables. One has his head out as we pass and he gives a gruff little flutter of his lips when I walk by. I look up into its black marble eyes and it seems to stare right back at me. Like it can see me. Really see me.

I drop my eyes to the floor and continue up the stairs Johanna leads us to in this immaculate barn. Not what I would think of when I think of a barn. Only from the height do I realize the floors are nearly spotless, only an occasional strand of hay here and there. No dirt. No horse shit. Like I can eat off of the floor.

Then heat flushes through me in a hot anger when I realize that these horses live better than the Factionless. They have better lodging, better food. People actually care for them. But I guess that's why we're here with Johanna. Because she thinks the Factionless are better than animals too.

The loft we walk into is brighter than the rest of the barn, even in the fading daylight from the window behind the Amity leader. She motions with her hands to the chairs around the office side of the loft, a desk backing up to the window with the chairs fanned out around it.

We both sit and Bennie doesn't waste any time. "The raids are mounting. We need to have your commitment to our cause."

The smile plastered across Johanna's face stays there and she doesn't miss a beat. "We've discretely diverted supplies to the wastes. Isn't that commitment enough?"

I've stayed away from these meetings out of fear of being recognized. I'm only here now because Bennie dragged me along and was convinced I would be fine. I haven't involved myself with any of the other factions except to infiltrate their headquarters and get information or supplies. This is the first I'm seeing this particular conversation, but based on Bennie's sighs of irritation she's played this game before. Possibly many times. I'm sure the passive Amity are infuriating to work with.

Bennie leans forward and stares Johanna down, her elbows resting on her knees. "When all of this goes down you won't be able to remain out of it. Jeanine won't let you. So you can choose now while you still have a choice or you can have Jeanine force one on you."

Johanna's eyes squint just a little, as if she's assessing the woman sitting in front of her. Her eyes never once look over to me, intent as they are on Bennie. "It sounds to me like you're not giving me much of a choice either. How are you any different from what you're insinuating of Jeanine?"

Bennie leans back and moves her arms to the arms of the chair she's in. "I won't kill you if you don't choose me."

That's when Joanna's eyes snap over me to, alert, attentive, and all too aware of what she's looking at. I have to will myself to sit still, not to fidget under her alarmingly penetrating gaze. For all the passivity this woman has, she did not learn that look in the Amity commune.

"What about your friend? What does she think?"

Her eyes start at my hood and trace my jacket down to my boots. She's assessing me. I wrack my brain trying to remember her history, any inkling of it. Where she could have learned that look. Then I remember: Candor. She transferred from Candor all those years ago, well before my time. No wonder she can sniff out bullshit with the best of them.

"My friend is here. What she thinks should be obvious," Bennie answers.

"I think all the doped up cookies in the world won't save your people if Jeanine decides to get her hands on them," I say, keeping my façade blank. "Fear will neutralize those drugs real quick."

"You say you're doing this for the greater good," Johanna says, her eyes still trained firmly on me. "How do you know your way is any better?"

I shrug. "We don't. But at least we're not going to purposely slaughter an entire faction to achieve our ends."

"Sometimes whispers are just whispers," she retorts.

"And sometimes Dauntless members are injected with a mind control transmitter that will allow Jeanine to take over their bodies and control them like robots from a distance to do her bidding," Bennie spits, obviously frustrated with how stubborn Johanna is being.

Her eyes start over to Bennie and this time it's Johanna who sighs. "My people aren't fighters."

"But they're numbers," I say.

"They're more voices against Jeanine. That's what we need. We'll take care of the rest," Bennie adds.

"Being passive isn't an option anymore," I say as I stare at the side of Johanna's head.

She gives a curt nod and looks down at her hands, picking at her cuticles. When she looks up her face is set, the lines of her mouth grim. "Fine. I just wish my options were better."

"Don't we all?" I say as I stand up.

"I'll pass the message along. We appreciate your support," Bennie says as she joins me and we walk toward the stairs.

"I'm sure you do," I hear Johanna mutter as we walk away. Then she rises and speaks. "I hope you're right, otherwise it won't matter what side we're on."

We stop and Bennie and I look at each other. She's not wrong. It's a shit sandwich no matter what and if we're wrong, if we fail to subdue Jeanine, everyone will suffer. Neither of us say anything. Bennie nods her head just slightly and my eyes linger on Johanna's face as I turn away and head down the stairs.

Jeanine is the one causing this whole mess. If it weren't for her our society wouldn't be on the brink of madness. Dauntless wouldn't be under her spell, Abnegation wouldn't need to find the blue monster under their bed. Me and my fellow Divergents wouldn't need to be in hiding. I'd hoped Candor would see the forest for the trees, but they're the ones proving stubborn. We don't have any hard evidence so they're treating what the Factionless want as hearsay at best. They've always been firmly faction first anyway. Not necessarily in Jeanine's pocket, but too close for comfort. Self-serving and self-protecting most of all. Not that I necessarily blame them, but I expected a bigger fight from Johanna. Or maybe I shouldn't have, all things considered.

Snow crunches underfoot as we make our way away from the barn in the dark, threading our way through the trees and back toward the wastes, Dauntless for Bennie. The air crackles with unseen electricity and something roils in my stomach. I take a deep breath as I run, trying to push away the nerves brewing just under my skin. Whatever's coming is going to be big and there won't be any coming back from it.

No matter what, things are going to change and they're doing to change drastically. I just hope we're not all bathed in blood by the end of it.


	35. 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters, an epilogue, and a short story left!

I watch from a distance, but I hear the screams as if I'm right up close. They echo through the ramshackle city, bouncing off crumpled concrete, reverberating off of exposed steel. I'll never not hear those screams for the rest of my life, however short that may be.

We all knew this was coming; we just thought we had time. More time. Jeanine pulled a switch on us. No one saw it coming, not even Eric, until it was too late. Well, Eric had a three hour notice, which was better than Bennie and Four's no hour notice. They both woke up to their fellow Dauntless lumbering around like shells, the control device activated. Eric tried to use the channels, but communication through there is slow. Too slow. By the time the message got to us Dauntless was already mobilizing. We were powerless to stop it.

I don't flinch with the report of a single gunshot, but I close my eyes at the sound of machine gun fire and quickly force them back open. I must bear witness. I must see what Jeanine is doing. It'll toughen my resolve. It'll make it easier for me to choke the life out of her worthless body.

Faces are indiscernible from up here, but I know Eric is down there leading the charge. Putting on the perfect face of ruthless Dauntless, untouched by the control chip. So it's all him. So convincing. Too convincing. I try to reconcile the Eric I know, the Eric that's in hiding under that mask, with the mask itself and it's getting harder and harder the more blood washes over his hands. He's beyond redemption now. Nothing I can say will save him from the Factionless or the Abnegation should they choose to fight back. He is forever a murderer and I'll be the woman who can't help but love him.

Fuck.

I scoot back from the ledge I'm sitting on and make my way back down to the ground through a crumbling interior stairway. If I were true Dauntless I would have scaled down the outside of the building, all eight stories. If I were true Dauntless I would be on the ground in Abnegation bending them to my will. How true is Eric? Is he in too deep? Is this how he sees his worth? Is he capable of doing anything else? Or does he know he won't be accepted anywhere else? That he's just gone too far.

Evelyn greets me outside the Factionless headquarters as I walk up, as if knowing when I would make my way back. More likely scouts gave her a heads up.

"Now's our chance," she says, her arms crossed over her chest as she walks over to meet me.

"Now is when we'd all get killed and I won't shoot innocent people on either side."

I try to shoulder my way past her but Evelyn grabs my arm and spins me back around to face her.

"Innocent?" she spits, indignation thick in the word. "No one in Dauntless is innocent." The retort is right there on my tongue, but she's speaking too fast. "They slaughter innocence. Us, Abnegation. How long before it's Candor and Amity? They kill their own people. This is not the society we were supposed to have. Now's our chance to take it back."

I look down at her fingers curling into my arm, her knuckles going white. I rip my arm out of her grasp and slowly look up at her. Fervor buzzes in her gaze. She's alive with it. It's simply us and them. There is no middle and for a second I'm terrified I won't be able to talk any sense into her. I've been able to get slivers in. Not much, but enough to mitigate stupid deaths. But this . . . she's reaching Jeanine levels of vigor and we all know where that ends up.

"Thoughtless retaliation will only get more people killed," I tell her. "Don't move them until I give the word."

I turn my back on her and walk toward the door. Only when she speaks does ice freeze the blood in my veins and I nearly shiver despite the spring warmth. Winter's been gone for weeks, but it feels like it just roared back in.

"They're not your people to command," Evelyn says. "They're mine."

I don't pause. I don't acknowledge what she said. I continue walking through the door, briskly walking back to my little room. Not too fast, not fast enough to draw attention. Word's gotten around by now what's going on, but details are slim. At least for right now. Let them be distracted elsewhere. Not with me.

I slam the door behind me and quickly lock it. I'll go out the window. I'm only on the second floor. The landing from the jump will only sting for a second. I rummage through the trunk at the foot of my bed, dig all the way down to the bottom, and pull out my Dauntless regs. A shudder rolls through me as I hold them up, but I swallow it down and toss them onto the bed. They're the most useful things to me right now. Next to my gun.

I stick my hand down into the corner of the trunk and hit wood. I shift around, thinking maybe it moved, but still only grab handfuls of cloth and snag my skin on some splinters. My heartbeat ratchets up and I try to stay calm, taking deep breaths through my nose. It was here. I know it. I put it there myself. I checked every night.

Which means it was taken sometime while I was watching the mess. Which means Evelyn knew I was gone, probably where I was, and had some foresight into what I was thinking. Bitch.

I swap out my clothes and pull my boots on, tying them tight. I'm going to have to grab a gun from the armory. I'm hoping for chaos. That way no one will notice me slipping in and out.

I throw back the lock in the door and rear back when I swing it open. Two Factionless stand at my door, guns strapped to their chests, fingers on the trigger. One man I recognize only in passing. He never said anything to me and I never said a thing to him. We ignored each other that way. The other man is Emmanuel. I never expected any loyalty from him. Ever. But I also never expected this.

"And you're doing what?" I ask, indignation thick in my voice.

"Evelyn wants you here," Emmanuel says without a flicker of emotion on his dark face. "She says she apologizes, but she says it's for the best."

For the best? For who? Because it's not going to be these guys when I'm done with them. Did Evelyn think I'd be cowed by a couple of firearms and two men I trained? I mean it's not like these guys are crap, but they're not me. I've been teaching them what I know, but weeks of training versus my years of training . . . No. They're about to have a bad day.

"Guys . . ." I say, my voice trailing off, my hands shrugging out. "Don't do this. I don't want to have to hurt you."

The other man, the man whose name I don't know, racks the slide on his gun and settles his finger back on the trigger. "Don't worry. You won't."

Laughter is thick in my throat and I nearly let a squeak of it out, but I hold it back. Oh this poor boy. If only he knew. I raise my eyebrow and take a step forward. In a flash Emmanuel shoulders his gun and fires. Pain explodes in my knee and I drop to the ground. In my haze of pain, a little sliver of my brain applauds Emmanuel's move. Take no shit, shoot first, ask questions later. I taught him well. The rest of my brain, the much larger portion of it, wants to skin him alive.

I look down and expect to see my blood puddled around me in an ever-growing circle. What I find is my clean floor and sticking out of my knee is a sim dart. Mother fucker. I angrily grab at the thing and yank it out of me, wincing as the serum offers one last bolt of pain before it starts to fade.

My gaze finds Emmanuel and if looks could kill he'd be on fire. He stares back at me with complete blankness, as if what he just did didn't faze him in the slightest.

"You gonna torture me up here? Not inflict any real pain, but drive me insane thanks to a thousand darts?"

My voice is haggard, squeaking, livid. I don't hide my frustration. I don't hide the pain from my face. Instead I amp it up a bit, curl down into myself. Make them think that really hurt. Which it very much did. But they don't need to know how fast I can recover. And if they're not going to take any shit, neither am I.

From my crouched position I whip my leg out and sweep Emmanuel off his feet. With his gun still attached to him I grab for it and yank it and him up, aiming the barrel at the man next to him. The man moving too slowly for me. I fire three darts at him and he squeals like a pig, dropping to the floor and scrabbling at the darts, blindly trying to rip them out and missing.

I fire two more shots at the downed man before sending the butt of the rifle crashing into Emmanuel's face. Blood splatters my arm and he goes down, out cold. At least one thing on his face is broken. Not my problem at the moment. Neither is the guy moaning and grunting on the floor next to the door. The serum in those darts should stick around for a while.

The strap gets stuck on Emmanuel's arm as I try to pull it off of him and his body drops down to the floor with a thump when I finally do. I shoulder the rifle and pop the magazine on the other man's. I eject the shot still left in the chamber and take it with me over to the window. There I toss out that lone cartridge and empty out the magazine, making it rain darts onto the ground below. Then I toss the magazine itself. If he recovers in a reasonable amount of time he won't be doing it armed with anything he can shoot. And I sure as shit am not going to get within clubbing distance.

My boots fall heavy on the wooden floor as I make my way out of the room, leaving the two men behind. At least now I won't have to go out of my way to the armory. One problem solved, at least. I go the path of least resistance out of the building, skimming along the wall and avoiding as many people as possible. Not that I think anyone would actually stop me. Most haven't looked at me twice since I've gotten here. Those who have do it with suspicion, and I'd rather not run into any of them. I don't need to burn all my energy batting away flies before I take on the queen bee.

It's afternoon and the sun is shining like it's a nice day out. Gunfire reports echo around the crumbling buildings around me even though the fighting is miles away. I hear it like it's so much closer. Too close. I remember the noise from my own training, as I'm being shot at while running through the streets trying to evade. I remember that like it just happened. The reports make me flinch despite myself and I kind of hate that my body does that. It's a sign of weakness.

Or a sign of survival.

I have one goal in mind. One place I need to be. Erudite. Jeanine's the mastermind behind all of this. The general. Of course the general isn't going to be on the field. She's going to be in command pulling all the strings. Or pushing all the buttons, in this case.

This side of our world is quiet, except for the echo of bullets from the other side. There's no fighting here. No screams. No panic. I don't even think all of the Factionless know what's going on.

Erudite's in the middle of the world, the center of our lives. I can't blame Jeanine for that one, but it's no surprise the brains of the factions would want to be in the middle of it all. Some foresight from the forefathers, maybe? I pass Amity from a distance and nothing looks amiss there. People outside are walking, not running. I can't hear any panicked voices.

Candor lands a little closer on my path, but still at a distance. Here there's pause. Gunshots fire louder from here and I can't blame them for stopping. Voices murmur about what's going on. What's that noise? But they still don't know. Maybe their leadership does by now, but it hasn't trickled out yet.

Erudite looms large in front of me as I come upon it, made of glass and steel. Resources pilfered from the scraps of the wastes years ago, a building strong enough to be salvageable from the ruins. Not too many people are on the street here and those who do pass keep their heads down. Mine, I point mine toward the sky. I know Jeanine's up there and despite all the glass around her, she won't see me coming.

I consider going in the front door and decide against it. Despite how bold I'm feeling now I don't want to end up dead in the lobby. Hoisted by my own petard. No thanks.

The only thing is Erudite's smart. They're not going to have an unused door just hanging open for me to crawl through. I walk around the back of the building and notice a window is open right on the ground floor. First level basement, actually.

I check my surroundings and make sure I'm clear before I walk softly over to the open window, cracked just enough to let in some fresh air into what must be a shitty office.

I lower myself into a crouch and wait, listening. No shuffling from inside the room. No tapping on a screen or keyboard. No ringing phones. Slowly, I edge my eyes to the window and peer in, just the slightest. Nothing moves. With a finger I push the window open a little more. It squeaks on its hinges and I freeze and wait. Listen. Nothing. I push it open a little farther and lower my head into the opening.

Empty.

It's an office, but one that isn't used, or isn't used often. Nothing's on the desk, not even a computer, and the walls are bare. Someone must have been in here recently, otherwise the window wouldn't be open. But whatever they were in there for it was a temporary set-up.

The window's just barely wide and tall enough for me to squeeze through, lowering my legs down first followed by the rest of me and clutching the rifle. The door to the sad little room is closed and I make my way over to it and stop again. Listen. Wait.

When I'm as sure as I can be that no one's around I slowly turn the knob, check the hall, and ease my way into the plain corridor lit by surprisingly soft light. The corners up at the ceiling are edged in lighting, giving off plenty to see by, but falling short of stark fluorescents.

If I know Jeanine then I know she's in the war room. Her command center where the mainframe for her master plan is. That's at the top of the building.

It's slow moving getting to the stairwell, but I finally get there unseen. Not too many people around in the building either. At least not down here. And lucky for me Erudite don't concern themselves with stairs. At least not stairs like this. So I climb. At least a dozen flights and my legs start screaming right around the halfway point.

Ten.

That's it. Jeanine's floor. This is where I need to be. If I remember correctly the stairwell is tucked back into a corner of the floor, access enough in case of a fire, but out of the way the rest of the time.

Another slow crack of the door and I wait, listening for movement. I hear none and immediately become suspicious. She's running a take-over of a faction. The floor should be buzzing.

I open the door a little more and squeeze myself into the hall. It's dead quiet. My skin prickles and the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. This isn't right.

The cold end of a gun presses meanly against the back of my head and I stop.

"If I want the job done right, looks like I'll have to do it myself."


	36. 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter, the epilogue, and a short story left!

If I had hackles they’d rise and if it were in me to snarl I would, but I’m not an animal despite wanting to tear apart the person behind me.

I turn around slowly and come face to face with the woman who got me found out in the first place. Kai. Rancid bitch. Although I should thank her. Being dead has been the most liberating time of my life.

“I had a feeling,” she says, sneering. Her eyes rove up and down my body, appraising me. Sizing me up. “That’s too bad. I really thought Eric was on our side.” Her sneer carves deeper into her face, as if she just smells something foul. “Turns out he’s running around with traitors. Guess I’ll have to take care of him too.”

I can’t help but roll my eyes. Kai’s taking care of nothing. And I watch her bristle at my lack of regard for her alleged position of power in our little twosome. I keep my arms at my sides, my hands fanned out to show I'm not reaching for anything. Yet.

“Give me the gun,” Kai spits.

A little snort escapes my throat and I desperately choke back a laugh. She’s trying so hard. I almost want her to at least attempt to win. Almost.

“Not going to happen.” The laughter in my voice goes unhidden and I watch Kai’s nostrils flare. She’s so hilarious when she’s angry.

“I’m the one with the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at your head. I can shoot you before you even think to reach for your rifle.” Her face flushes red and I see the stain creeping up her neck. She’s getting so angry. And so careless.

My movement’s quick and my hand’s on her gun before she even finishes her thought while my free hand lashes out and knocks into her wrist, releasing the gun from her grasp and pushing it into mine. For a second I want to unload it and throw the pieces down the stairs. But I think better of that. I flick the safety on and tuck it into my waistband. Not the best place for it, but the only place for now.

“You talk too much,” I say, keeping my face neutral. “Way too much.”

My fist has a mind of its own as it comes flying out and straight into Kai’s face. She stumbles, cupping her now-bleeding nose, but recovers quickly. I hold back my rising animal instincts, but Kai lets hers loose, snarling and lunging at me.

She jumps into my arms and I catch her and topple, landing on the gun strapped to my back. That’ll bruise more than the flailing woman on top of me. At first I’m on the defensive, blocking her hits. She hits her mark a couple of times and I can feel a bruise blooming around my right eye, but that’s all she gets. I throw an elbow into her temple and she topples backward, stunned.

“You never know when to give up, do you?” I pull myself up off the ground and stomp over to her. She feels like a lumpy lead weight as I pull her up by her collar. Her hands find mine and she digs her nails into my flesh. I don’t even flinch. “This has won you nothing, you know that, right?”

“It’s won me everything since I exposed you,” Kai spits through bloody, gritted teeth. “You’re a poison and I’m the antidote. I haven’t left Jeanine’s side since we all thought you died.”

A sinister smile crawls up my face and the whites of my teeth peek through my lips as they crack open. I can imagine what I look like, but I give the bitch credit. She doesn’t shove herself back. Although I do see her pupils dilate just a little, her eyes widen just a hint. Whatever she’s feeling, what she’s truly feeling, she’s keeping it on the inside as much as she can.

I lower myself down to her ear, my lips just brushing the skin there, and I whisper, “You ever think Jeanine doesn’t like narcs? That she’s keeping you close so you don’t run your mouth to anyone else?”

Pain, white hot and like lightning shoots through my ear and I cry out before stoppering my voice, choking it all back so not to alert anyone. Although I’ve pretty much just let the cat out of the bag on that one. I try to pull away, but the pain only intensifies.

Then I hear it, a wet, haggard gasping right in my ear, so close I can feel moisture. She’s biting my ear. The bitch is actually trying to bite my ear off!

Blood, wet, sticky, and warm, trickles down the side of my face and I bring my fist down on her head, over and over again, but she doesn’t ease up. She tries pulling away, effectively trying to bite my damn ear off, but I move with her. Then my hand finds her throat and squeezes. I hear her choked breath as she tries to gasp for air. I shimmy my hand up and clamp down right at her jaw, like I would a dog that wouldn’t drop whatever was in its mouth. Fitting for the bitch.

It takes a couple of seconds, but she finally releases her bite on me and I roll out of her reach. I immediately put my hand up to my ear and wince at the sting of my sweaty flesh on the open wound. I look at my hand as I bring it back down and it’s covered in blood. Okay, fine. My animal’s coming out now too.

I sneer as I lunge back at her as she’s still gasping on the ground, hands rubbing her throat. My fist plows into her face and I close my eyes against the blood that splatters back on me. I don’t stop. I don’t think. I just keep hitting. I don’t realize she’s gone limp underneath me until I hit bone and the pain reverberates up my arm. I look down and I see her pulpy face a mess underneath me and she’s no longer moving.

I’m gasping, heaving, my heart thundering a mile a minute. My fist is still raised in the air, my hand clenched, and it’s an effort to unfurl my fingers and release my grip on myself. I let it go. But I haven’t let it go, have I? I just pummeled it into the ground.

I only recognize Kai’s face as having been a face because I know one used to be there. Now it’s a bloody, soggy mess with no definable features. I sit atop her and watch her chest. I can’t tell if she’s breathing or not and if she’s not my eyes could be playing tricks on me, making me think her chest is moving when. So I find a spot on her neck relatively clear of blood and press my fingers to her pulse. It takes me a couple tries to get the angle right, but eventually I find the right nook.

A flutter, barely there, under my fingers. She is still alive. Sucks for her. I can’t be sure that if I just leave her like this that she’ll die on her own or if someone will find her and nurse her back to health. A vindictive Kai is one thing. A vengeful one is another. Plus she knows I’m alive, assuming I didn’t beat all of her memories back to childhood out of her. No, I’m not taking any chances.

I roll her over onto her side and slide her up into a sitting position, her back resting against me. She doesn’t make any noise, not even a groan of pain. I really could just leave her here to die. But that sliver of a chance . . . I can’t. It’s too risky. For me, for the Factionless. Jeanine trusted her once and all her nagging was proved right. Why wouldn’t Jeanine trust her again?

I take her jaw in my hands, her chin cradled in my palm. I leverage myself just right, reaching my hand behind her head just so. And with one quick jerk I hear a pop and I know it’s over. I press my fingers to her neck and nothing pushes back. Her body’s completely still.

So I get up and slide her over to the stairwell, pull off her jacket, and shove her onto the landing, watching as she crumples into a heap on the cement, her head at an angle that no human’s should get into. I go back to the spot where I beat her bloody and wipe away the mess I left behind, the drag marks across the tile floor. Leaving nothing but shine behind. It’ll be a while before anyone finds her, especially up this high. No one’s using the stairs unless it’s an emergency.

I crack the door back open and walk the jacket back down to her. Without warning my stomach cramps and I heave into the jacket in my hands, leaving a piece of myself behind with her. I’ve trained for years to be the perfect soldier, but never, until now, have I had to kill someone. Well, I guess I didn’t have to kill her. I just didn’t think not to. My stomach roils again but I hold it back, tossing the soiled jacket on top of Kai’s crumpled body.

She ruined everything. She ruined my life even though she really set me free. Her actions led to my death, as far as she was concerned until just a few minutes ago. And she didn’t bat an eye doing it. Obviously it was kill or be killed. If she saw me, and I’d left her alive, she’s hunt me to the ends of the earth. And despite how much of a useless annoyance she is, was, she picked at that scab until it bled. She was never deterred. She never stopped until she thought I was dead. I’m merely returning the favor, except I know this mission was accomplished.

That’s what I keep telling myself as I walk back up the stairs to the tenth floor. I didn’t expect to get waylaid like this. Now I can get back on track, with the pop of Kai’s neck still ringing in my ears. I shake my head, trying to shove the noise away, and walk toward the end. The end of Jeanine’s life or the end of mine. However this works out. One of us is dying today.


	37. 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an epilogue and a short story left! I'm so thrilled that I've gotten so many of you hooked with my little head movie here! Nice to know that I'm not the only one that likes this kind of thing. :)

My steps are slow, measured, and silent to all but the most trained of ears. I creep along the hallway, feeling far too exposed and being far too suspicious of all the quiet around me. The lack of bustle.

Voices murmuring up ahead stop me in my tracks. I duck into a recessed doorway and listen, waiting for someone to walk down the hall, at the ready to subdue anyone who should notice me. I don’t want to kill unnecessarily. At the thought of killing my stomach lurches, thinking of Kai’s bloody body in the stairwell. That was a necessity for survival, I tell myself. Over and over again. I press closer against the wall and listen.

The murmur fades away and I realize the people must be walking in the opposite direction. Away from me. I sneak a peek around the corner and see that I was correct, watching their bodies walk away. I must be closer to command than I thought. Or I crept farther long the hallway than I anticipated. Either way I’m not paying attention and that’s a bad sign.

I look behind me just for good measure and see the way clear. I look back ahead and continue creeping, inching my way along the hallway, careful not to make any sound. Murmuring voices get louder the closer I get to the open doorway.

I pause just outside it and lean forward just far enough to get a look inside. My sight adjusts quickly, the way my brain processes around the wall covering half my vision, and I see all I need to see. A giant touch screen takes up the far wall with Jeanine’s perfectly coiffed head planted firmly in front of it. She reaches up to touch something and all I can imagine is the puppet master playing with her toys.

I’ve seen all of these pieces before. That screen, even bits of the program. Just not all thrown together like this in one central room of death and mayhem. I lean forward again and take in a better view of the room.

There aren’t too many people around. Not surprising considering how secretive Jeanine’s been with this whole project. It makes me even wonder if the few people in there know exactly what’s going on. It wouldn’t surprise me either if they didn’t. Maybe a half dozen people occupy the larger-than-needed room, Jeanine included, and they all look fairly Erudite.

Until a black-clad figure walks into my view from off to the side.

Eric.

I don’t need to see his face. I can tell by the way he holds himself, how he walks. I lean forward just a little more and catch the side of his face, confirming what I’m seeing.

Shit.

Not necessarily a plan-killer, but there’s certainly a wrench in my spokes now. This isn’t going to be easy. And I don’t know how much Eric is going to help. Or hinder.

“Madeline, just come into the room, please. Your hovering is a disturbance.”

I nearly choke on my tongue and before I yank myself back out of view I see Eric visibly stiffen, a lurch to his step. She set us up. The bitch set us both up. How long has she known?

I don’t move and I watch her turn around to face me, her eyes lingering on Eric for just a second, the beginnings of a sneer curling up her lip. “I told you not to get romantically involved,” she says before her eyes land on me.

“You’re not as stealthy as you think. Plus, you made an incredible racket with Kai.”

So that was it. I was too loud. Maybe she sent Kai out on something unrelated and heard our battle. Of course Erudite has cameras everywhere. I wasn’t thinking. Not when I was in the heat of it with Kai. There was no thinking involved in that. Just doing. And it exposed me, and Eric, entirely.

So stupid. I’m so much weaker than I thought. So much more careless. Now I’ve killed the both of us.

Jeanine’s eyes glance to the people at various desks off to the side and they scatter like mice, running away into corners and through back doors not the one I’m standing in.

“You understand why this has to happen,” she says, a snide little smile on her lips that doesn’t reach her eyes. Her hands clasp in front of her and she stands stock still.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow slide along the wall behind Eric. Metal glints in the overhead light. Without a second thought I shoulder my rifle. Eric pulls his sidearm and points it at me. Maybe he will kill me this time. Well, I’m going to die saving him.

I put my finger on the trigger and I squeeze. A nanosecond later his gun fires and the reports battle in the enclosed room, making my eardrums throb. I watch the shadow go down in a heap on the floor, my aim accurate. Then I realize I’m still watching.

I look at Eric and frown. He lowers his gun, carbon still snaking from the barrel, and his eyes are at my feet. I look down, turn around, and see my own shadow crumpled at my feet, not moving. I look back at Eric and catch him as he turns around from looking at his assassin. My ears are still ringing, but the noise is lessening. I didn’t hear the body at my feet slump down to the floor and I barely hear my boots tap against the tile before I come all the way into the room, my rifle still shouldered.

Eric turns to face Jeanine and raises his gun again, her heart sighted. My heart soars. In the end he’s here for me. Saving me like I’m saving him. Still helping each other survive.

Jeanine puts her hands up and skitters backward, one of her heels catching on the floor and she losing her balance for a second. She recovers quickly, but stumbles into the main screen that’s swirling with light and activity. We may have stopped her, but the system is still running. Dauntless is still under her control.

“Let’s discuss this.” Her voice is practically steady, strong. Practically. I hear the shudder just a little bit.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Eric says, his deep timbre rumbling through my chest. I hide my smile deep down and keep my eyes on Jeanine while my hearing comes back and I listen to the rest of the room.

Jeanine turns to Eric then, her eyes filled with anger and hatred. “Your entire life for this?” she says, motioning to me. “She’s Divergent and a traitor. That’s what you throw your life away for?”

Then it’s as if a light turns on in her head and her eyes widen, brighten just a little bit. “You kept killing. All those raids. Why?”

“So you wouldn’t know,” he says, his voice thick.

She smirks. “There are other ways so you wouldn’t have to kill so many innocent people, Eric.” She straightens up a little more and I take a step closer, the barrel of my rifle only feet from her. She looks at the gun, then up at me, and then back to Eric. “But you kept killing. You liked it.”

“I did what I had to do to survive and keep Madeline’s secret.” He’s stock still, only his jaw moving when he speaks. His pistol never wavers.

“Such justifications,” she says as her gaze slides toward me. “If it helps you cope. I never realized you were so easily influenced. You and Madeline haven’t been reunited for a year yet you abandon everything for her. You save the people you’ve been hunting for years. You changed your mind so quickly?”

“I never said that,” he says and a rush of cold trails down my spine. I have to trust him. I have to. Doubt only gets me paranoid. I didn’t get this far, we didn’t get this far, just to have him pull the rug out from underneath me. “She just gave me a different point of view to consider. And I considered it.”

“And accepted it,” Jeanine adds, her hands inching toward a button on the base of the screen.

“Don’t even think about it,” I spit, readying to shoot her hand off her wrist.

“No so much accept as I now doubt my previous line of thinking more,” he adds in proper Erudite fashion, even down to the final minutes.

“More,” Jeanine adds, rolling her eyes away from me, away from my gun, and back over to Eric. She’s trying to dig into him, claw him back to her side. “So you doubted some before.”

“That’s the problem with you,” Eric says, as if taking the words right out of my mouth. I don’t even need to say anything. He’s saying it all for me. “You expect nothing less than absolute loyalty and the idea of me ever questioning you puzzles you. As if I were never Erudite, as if I’ve never had to think before. That I’ve always been a mindless solider for you to order around.”

She cocks her head to the side like an expectant bird, waiting for a kernel of something. “But you have. Your parents groomed you that way. And your actions . . .” Jeanine let the thought trail off, let Eric’s actions speak for themselves. We all know what he’s done, what he continues to do. We all know what our parents put us through growing up. 

“I did what I had to do to survive.”

Jeanine’s eyebrow quirks up, a snide little smirk trying to form on her face, but she fights it. “Some would say that was the excuse of the Nazis all those years ago. Merely following orders. Trying to survive in a time of war.”

Eric snorts, derision thick in the sound of his voice. “If I’m a Nazi, then you’re Hitler.”

“And we know how that one ends,” I add, my own smirk on my lips, except I’m not trying to hide mine.

Jeanine openly laughs, so much mocking. But I see her hand shake. She grabs the edge of the desk to hide it, but not quickly enough for me not to see her weakness. Her fear.

“Hitler died and the Nazis were hunted for decades after that war ended. Kill me and you still won’t be free.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say and take a step closer. I pull myself up, away from my rifle, and unsling the thing from around my shoulders. I drop it to the ground with a loud clatter and Jeanine’s eyes go wide for just a fraction of a second. I reach into my waistband and pull out Kai’s gun. I drop the magazine to make sure it’s actually loaded, slap it back in, rack the slide, and flip the safety. “There’s so much freedom in death. I should know.” I smile, a shit-eating grin that pulls my lips wide. “Freedom for us for never having to deal with you again, and freedom for you for not having to worry about the survival of our world anymore.”

I step to the side, closer to Eric, to get Jeanine to turn away from the console. I don’t want to shoot the thing without shutting down the simulation first. She moves as I do and for the first time in my life I see her start to fold. Her shaking is obvious now. All the fisting she does can’t hide her tremors. Beads of sweat roll down her temples, but she doesn’t bother to wipe them away. Her eyes are wide, pupils dilated. She really is afraid.

“We can discuss this. Come to an understanding.” Jeanine’s hands are out to us, trying to stop us.

“In all my years of working with you, Jeanine, I’ve never known you to be the understanding type,” I say.

Her eyes go even wider and she spits out, “People change!” She looks to Eric as an example, her hands out to him. “Don’t they?”

“Not you,” he says as he lowers his gun.

I raise mine, put my finger on the trigger and squeeze. The noise is an explosion in the enclosed space, one that reminds me of my own faked death. I remember Eric standing in front of me, the bullet coming at me, and then nothing. Except the bullets in the gun I’m holding aren’t fake. It explodes out of the back of Jeanine’s head in a spray of blood and gore, something that no one noticed when I died. I imagine they just assumed. Jeanine’s body drops to the ground in a limp lump, arms and legs askew. Her eyes remain wide open, the hole in her forehead leaking blood.

I step over to her and nudge her further onto her stomach, letting her head roll forward. I have to be sure. The hole back there is the size of my fist. I can see into her skull clearly. It’s awful and my stomach tries to fight back. I turn away before my eyes can take in anymore. Two in one day, from the nothing of my life before. Making up for lost time, maybe. Or just being exceptionally picky with who I kill. The two under my belt are well deserved, I think.

It takes me a second to compose myself, just a second. Then I’m turning to the console and I start tapping. It’s been a little while since I’ve handled the program and where I pause over the controls, trying to remember what went to what, Eric picks up in my stead, tapping where I left off, helping me shut it down.

His body is a welcome wall next to me, hovering over me. I feel his heat wrapping around me like a blanket, comforting me. He doesn’t place a hand on my shoulder, doesn’t wrap me in his arms. That’s not what he does and it’s not what I need right now. The lack of space between us and his help in dismantling Jeanine’s evil plan is perfect enough.

When we’re done I turn to the monitors playing the carnage out for the two of us. As if a switch has been turned off the Dauntless under Jeanine’s sim control snap out of their stupor. Look at the guns in their hands in shock. Look at the bodies around them in disgust. And the screams roar over the speakers, drown out the terrified Abnegation on the receiving end of that slaughter, and join in their pain.

But will anyone see it like that? Will anyone truly understand?

Then Eric grabs my hand and leads me out of the control room and to the stairwell I came up. He opens the door and pauses, taking in the sight of Kai’s crumpled body on the landing underneath us. But it’s only for a second before he’s leading me down the stairs, jumping over her corpse, and continuing down.

“I’m going to have to find the people in that room that knew I was there,” he says, his voice shaking with our steps.

“I know,” I tell him. And I do. He’s already planning his next moves, his next dozen moves, and for him that involves killing innocent people. I can’t stomach it, but he can and a little part of me is disgusted by that. He touches me with those blood-covered hands. But another, much bigger part of me doesn’t want him to die.

We get to the bottom floor and to a back door in an empty hallway, quiet for the time being. We both exit and we both stop and turn to each other, stare at each other, take each other in as if this is the last time we’ll see each other.

“Evelyn’s just as bad,” I tell him and shake my head. “She’ll need to be kept in control.”

He nods. “And just because Jeanine’s dead doesn’t mean there aren’t a half dozen others ready and willing to take her place.”

“Eric, you can’t go on with the status quo, hunting Factionless and Divergents. It’ll be too much, especially now that Jeanine’s dead.”

“I’m not,” he says as he places a hand on my neck, gentle, warm, and rubs his thumb along my jaw. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, but I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

I place my hand on his and squeeze. “I’ll stay with the Factionless for now. It won’t make a difference if I killed Jeanine. Shit, they’ll throw me a party.”

He smiles and leans in, pressing his lips to mine. I revel in the taste of him, in the feeling of him. I wrap my arms around his neck and bring him in closer, never wanting to let him go. But he can’t come with me. The Factionless will kill him. He needs to figure out his own short term game, and them we can figure out long term. Assuming Dauntless suspects nothing and doesn’t kill him outright. I refuse to let that thought burrow in and I squeeze my eyes shut tight against it.

“This isn’t over,” he says as we break apart. “It’s just the start.”

I smirk at his words. “You say that like I don’t know it. Please. Give me a little more credit.”

He laughs as I take a step back, readying myself to get back to the Factionless before they do something stupid. Trying to tear my heart away from his hands so Eric can go do what he needs to do to save himself first.

“I’ll be in touch in a few days, as soon as I figure out what to do next.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say with a smile, a laugh, trying to choke back my tears, my fear that this is the last time I’ll be seeing him although I desperately hope it’s not.

“Go,” he says, as if allowing me to leave now.

I scoff. “Don’t tell me what to do,” I say as I turn and break into a run, back toward the Factionless, back toward the beginning of a new future, whatever that is going to look like.

Eric’s laugh travels with me as I go, lingers in my ears, his touch imprinted on my skin. I will see him again. I know it. We’ll figure this out and put this broken world back together somehow.


	38. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Just a little short after this which I'll post later this weekend. Thank you so much, everyone, for reading and leaving such incredible comments. I appreciate every single one of them. I'm so happy you decided to take a chance and read my word-written head movie here. Good to know you all like this version of Eric too. Thank you!

Everything went up in flames and I feel like I was holding the match. After Jeanine’s death it was like someone took a box of puzzle pieces and scattered them into the wind, leaving the rest of us to find them all and put them back together again.

Evelyn listened to nothing I told her and dove headfirst into battle with Dauntless. I’d gotten back to her headquarters and they’d already left. They blind-sided my old faction, nearly all of their members already stunned by coming out of the sim having to immediately turn around and defend themselves to a bunch of raging, armed Factionless. It was a mess. I warned her, but she didn’t care. Even more people died that day than needed to and even months later we’re still reeling from it.

No one trusts anyone. Can’t say I blame them.

Dauntless is a fractured mess. Half the leadership was in Jeanine’s pocket. The other half were just as stunned as the rest. Between the Factionless seeking their revenge and the faction members themselves lashing out at their leaders, that herd's been mightily thinned. Eric didn’t even have to do much. He just stayed out of the way. Kept a low profile. Once we saw how everything was dissolving, he kept out of it. Not like he could have stepped in with a 180 degree change in his mindset to re-establish Dauntless. No one would have believed him and they would have probably tried to kill him. Especially the Factionless.

Amity and Candor have washed their hands of any blood, keeping themselves firmly out of any conflict, but both their eyes have turned firmly on Abnegation. Help has been offered, but blame has been placed. Abnegation leadership was supposed to be placating, satisfying to all. Instead it harbored a coup right under their noses and they were none the wiser for it. Lines in the sand have been drawn, however inadvertently, and trust is blown. Months after the initial incident and what remains of the factions are still trying to bring a delegation together to try and figure out what’s to be done with the remains of our world.

Of course no one trusts Erudite. The masterminds behind all of this. Even more complicit than Dauntless. They were the ones controlling the Army, after all, that’s to some in Dauntless leadership. Eric, of course, included in that. Their building was stormed by pissed off Dauntless and Factionless alike and the people who didn’t get killed in the melee are being held prisoner in Dauntless cells awaiting questioning. Like Eric, no one will accept them, even after they’re thoroughly vetted.

These are not rational times and we are not dealing with rational people.

That’s why I’m having so much trouble with this mess I’ve made. Did I really make everything better by removing Jeanine from power? Or are the inmates now officially running the asylum? I don’t know. What’s funny is no one’s asking about Divergents. No one cares. There are so many bigger problems, more immediate and gun-toting problems, to deal with than someone who thinks differently. Who was on the receiving end of Jeanine’s witch hunt.

I shook the bag and let the cats loose. I’m just waiting for them to calm down. The thing is, maybe they never will.

I toss my pack by a tree on the edge of our world, a place where the fence is crumbling and no one’s thought to fix it. It’s a place where no one goes. Far outside of Amity’s reach for their farms or Dauntless’s runs for physicality. Not even the Factionless journey out here. Maybe there’s just so much fear surrounding what’s on the other side of this fence that no one’s willing to come close to a breach.

Works for us either way.

I don’t say a thing as I wait outside the derelict house. I’m sure it was nice once in a world gone by. It’s certainly big enough. But nature’s been taking it back for years as tree limbs poke out of broken windows and ivy climbs up the far side of the house.

His steps ring clearly out to me and I cross my arms over my chest, feigning impatience as I wait for him to come out, knowing that he knows I’m here and is dragging his time along. His footsteps stop and chirping birds fill the late summer quiet, a breeze rustling through the magnificent green leaves.

We do this often, this battle of wills, and this time it’s my patience that wears thin.

“Ugh, will you come out already? Let’s get this show on the road.”

Not seconds later the door swings open and Eric walks down the stairs, still in Dauntless regs. It’s what he’s comfortable in, he’s told me before. Can’t say I blame him. It’s what I’m wearing too. And for what we’re about to do they’re the clothes that make the most sense.

“Always impatient,” he says, a light smile playing on his lips as he shakes his head and walks over to me.

He knows it’s not true, but he teases me anyway and my heart swells with the rib. Out here, with no one watching, it’s like we can finally be free to just be us. No one’s getting in our way, no one’s judging, no one’s second-guessing anything.

He bends over and takes my face in his hands and presses his lips to mine, a firm yet gentle kiss that reminds me we’re in this together, this clusterfuck of a mess. And we’re going to figure it out together. I’m reminded of what he told Jeanine just before I killed her, about how I made him think, how I just helped give him another argument to consider. Of course he considered it. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. But old habits die hard and it’s a battle to remind him about what we’re working toward and why what we had wasn’t working. Brainwashing is a bitch to undo.

He breaks the kiss and I smile. “You’re just trying to delay the inevitable.”

We both look toward the broken section of fence and I hear him scoff.

“So you’re saying I’m afraid.”

“No more than I am,” I respond.

It’s a fair enough answer, because I am afraid and while that bravado still comes out in him, he’s afraid too. All our lives we’ve been told nothing’s out there. Nothing good. But we’ve been lied to all our lives, so we’re going looking to see what we can find. If anything.

Evelyn knows. She was the one who recommended it. I’ve been restless since I killed Jeanine and Eric’s lost to our world. He has too much blood on his hands. Despite his actions toward the end, despite him working with us, the past is cemented and immovable. They will never forgive him for what he’s done. And his reputation carries across our entire world. He’s ruthless, cunning, manipulative. Can’t be trusted. Blood hungry. A traitor to Dauntless, a traitor to Jeanine, a traitor to everyone, regardless of what the true story is. But he’s not ready to give up and I love him for his perseverance even in the face of adversity.

Frankly he could have told everyone to fuck themselves and left. But he didn’t. He’s here with me and we’re doing this.

Bennie and Four are staying behind with Evelyn for now, doing their best to help establish order to our disheveled world. If we find something they’ll be the first people we send for.

Until then I pick my pack back up and shoulder it. The thing’s massive. I remember seeing rucks like this in archive footage, what the armies used to carry all those years ago. It’s what we carry now, bags big enough for us to fit in and at least half our weight. Walking’s going to be rough, but they’re necessary if we’re going to survive anything.

Eric places his hand on my shoulder and even in the late summer heat I feel his warmth running into me. He’s here. I’m here. We’re doing this.

“Ready?” he asks, a small frown on his face, his look serious.

We’re walking into the unknown. We have everything we think we might need hanging on our backs for what we’ll face out there. I look out past the broken fence, into the vast nothing beyond our walls, before looking up at him, my face equally as serious.

“Yeah, I am.”

He gives me a little nod and I nod back. We turn to look at the hole in the fence and walk toward it as one. We don’t hold hands. We don’t give each other encouraging words. We don’t need it. Instead we walk side-by-side, our sleeves brushing, our boots crunching over debris underneath us. And we walk into the unknown together.


	39. An Eric Short

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah! I knew I forgot something yesterday! The short story! So this is officially it. The last little bit in the world I sort-of created. I originally wrote this for an event on Wattpad earlier in the year and I liked it so I kept it around. It's from Eric's POV when he and Madeline were in their teens, not long before their Choosing Ceremony. It doesn't provide much insight, but enough, I think. A big thank you again for everyone leaving comments and enjoying the ending! It really warms my heart that you all enjoyed it and you like where I finished it, especially. Endings are always hard but I felt this one, all things considered, was fitting enough for the two of them. Anyway, enjoy this little short and thank you for reading!

The collar of my shirt presses just hard enough against my throat that it feels like I'm going to choke, but every time I tug on it my father hits my knuckles with his pen. Of course it can't be just any cheap pen. It's a thing with weight. Heft. And I hiss every time he strikes me with it.

Asshole.

"Stop playing with your collar and I won't have to hit you," he says as he flips through a book, a tumbler of rye whiskey in his hand.

He never could stomach the Amity wine or vodka that all the other parents drink. Too cheap, he says. So he pays a premium for the expensive stuff. It all tastes like trash to me, but I like the way it makes me numb. How I can't feel the world after a couple of shots.

I run my hand through my hair and my father glares at me while my mother sits to his other side and ignores the two of us. I shall not fidget, stress, or show any outward signs of discomfort while Jeanine's here. It would be unbecoming, what with everything my parents have worked for. I just want to get smashed and forget this night ever happened.

But I can't. Because this is my path. My father reminds me every day. He's been grooming me for this for as long as I can remember. You don't get to be this close to Jeanine and not get your choice of missions. Well, my parents' choice of missions. I didn't need them to tell me to transfer to Dauntless. At least there I might be able to breathe. Or maybe not if Jeanine will be hanging herself over my head. At least then I can pretend to define myself instead of everyone else doing it for me.

"What time will everyone be arriving?" my father asks my mother, as if he doesn't have the schedule memorized.

"Six, dear," she replies. "They should be arriving any moment."

As if on cue the doorbell rings and I flinch at the noise. I don't move. I sit with my hands folded in my lap. Not fidgeting. Not stressing. Not showing any discomfort.

"Go answer the door, Eric. Don't leave our guests waiting," my father tells me, annoyance lacing his words.

I don't realize I'm clenching my teeth until pain shoots into my jaw and I release the tension. I push myself out of the uncomfortable chair and hide a wince. The bandage under my sleeve catches the sore, just barely scabbing over. I turn to my father and watch him take a drag off of his hand-rolled cigarette without even acknowledging me. The embers on the tip burn bright as he inhales and the sore on my arms throbs.

The doorbell rings again and I move faster, nearly slipping on the tile floor, not wanting my father to repeat himself. With his words, a pen, a cigarette. He can keep all that to himself.

Cold brass presses into my palm as I turn the knob and come face to face with the smiling Bordonaros. All white teeth and crinkled eyes, they're almost infectious and I can't help but smile back. Mr and Mrs Bordonaro walk through the door murmuring pleasantries. Mr Bordonardo pats me on the shoulder and I nod as he walks by. They and my parents have known each other forever. It's hard to believe that they even like each other, they seem so different. But everyone carries their weight differently. If they've liked each other for this long there must be a reason why. They have to be more alike than they appear.

A throat clears behind me and I forget Madeline is standing there, just inside the door. I do that a lot with her, forget she's there. It's like she makes an effort to blend in. I step out of her way and close the door behind her. She smiles more into the floor than at me and keeps her eyes on her feet.

Our circle of friends brush up against each other every once in a while. We're a small enough group that it's inevitable. But we're not close. At least I know her well enough that I don't have to put on a face.

"You ready for this?" I ask, leaning down to her. She really is tiny. I'm nearly a head taller than her.

I must gauge the distance incorrectly because when she looks back up our cheeks brush and we both jerk away. I immediately stick my hands in my pockets only to rip them back out. Slouchy, my father would call it. So I clasp my hands behind my back instead. Doesn't make the heat in my stomach go away, though.

"Not like I have a choice," she says, pink tingeing her cheeks, and she's as honest with me as I am with her.

Neither of us want to be here, but at least we can suffer through this together.

The Erudite blue dress she's wearing is short-sleeved and comes to her knees, modest but fitting against her small frame. There isn't much shape to her, but the dress fits her perfectly. Dark hair frames a face that's starkly pale against it, as if she spends all her time inside. She just might. I don't know what her path is, just like I doubt she knows mine. I barely know it.

For how forgetful she makes herself out to be I still notice Madeline every time I see her in a crowd. For all her desire to blend she stands out against everyone else trying to act the part. I'm rarely alone when I'm outside of this hellhole of a house, but Madeline seems to be, even in a group. I wish I could have gotten to know her better. But I doubt that would have made much of a difference.

"Madeline, come in here," her mother calls to her from the sitting room and we walk side by side to the beginning of an awful evening.

"I keep a flask in the bathroom, in the cabinet under the sink," I say out the side of my mouth and I watch her smile in the corner of my eye. She doesn't look up when she speaks.

"Is that so?"

"Just make sure to save me some," I whisper as we get closer to the sitting room.

She does look up to me then and the smile that lights her eyes nearly takes my breath away. There is no trying with her. She just is, this girl in Erudite blue. Like it's these little moments she lives for, whether they're with me or not. If I were being honest with myself, I live for them too. Jokes, flirting, anything to take my mind away from what's in front of me.

"No promises," she whispers back as we enter the sitting room and her mother rushes over to her.

Madeline's lips are still shaped into a smile, but I watch her eyes, and the happy light there fades to dark. It's time to play the part. We all need to play the part. I take up my seat on the chair I was in before and Madeline sits next to me. I watch her move with a reserved grace, holding back. Not being too showy. That would detract from our fearless leader. Can't have that, even when she hasn't arrived yet. She lowers herself into the seat and her dress rides up just high enough to show her thigh and a quick peek of blinding white gauze on her leg.

My heart thuds in my chest, the rush of blood silencing the room around me. The sore on my arm throbs. I watch her hands move like lightning to yank her dress back down and her eyes find mine and we stare at each other for an infinite moment, understanding passing between us like stolen secrets. I know, I try to tell her. How much it hurts. What a parent's face looks like when they're hurting their child. How deep the scars run. I know.

Her eyes drop down and she looks away. I watch her for a half a second, all the time it takes for her to compose herself again, before she looks back out to the room, the emotionless smile on her face. All is right again.

I tug on the sleeve of my injured arm. Feel the fabric catch my own gauze. Feeling it pull against the wound, reminding me that I still feel something, even though I'm starting to forget what that something actually is. The pain anchors me and I compose myself too before I put my mask back on and suffer through the night.


End file.
